


In Darkness Sorrow Grows, In Your Eyes I See the Light [Discontinued]

by warqueenfuriosa



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Drama, F/M, Gothic, Hurt/Comfort, Period-Typical Racism, Romance, Victorian Attitudes, rated teen for elements of blood and gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2018-12-10 03:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11683260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warqueenfuriosa/pseuds/warqueenfuriosa
Summary: The taste of roses flooded Jyn's mouth as the dead spirit claimed her body. It turned her sorrow into a living thing, feeding off of the grief from her mother's death. Caught between the spirit world and the living, she wandered the moors, a restless spirit by day, a haunted woman by night.Cassian's home is the sea, amid his rough crewmen and the blue plains of the water stretched out before him. But when his ship is taken out of commission for repairs, he returned to Festfield Hall, his inherited estate he wants nothing to do with since the ghosts of his parents took up residence in the hallways and lingered in the shadow-webbed corners.Then he found Jyn, another ghost to plague him, dressed only in a white shift that did nothing against the cold and the rain that made her teeth chatter loud enough for him to hear. She was filthy, hair matted and eyes wild, more beast than human, but he slid his coat off anyway and wrapped it around her.And a single petal was shed from the rose of sorrow that had become Jyn's heart.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go. This is my baby. It's been in the works for a few months and I'm finally releasing it into the wild. When I first thought I'd write a Beauty and the Beast AU for Rogue One, I had hoped for something light and sweet.  
> And then this gothic-victorian-horror-romance thing came out full of angst goblins. Oops.  
> Apologies in advance for any historical/geographical/etc. errors. Happy reading and feel free to drop by on tumblr and say hi @warqueenfuriosa
> 
> EDIT: Nov. 8, 2018. I've left the Star Wars/Rogue One fandom. I haven't decided yet if I'll leave my fics available on Ao3 or take them down. But I will no longer be continuing this work.

**ENGLAND, 1837**

Shadows licked at Jyn’s bare, dirt stained toes. The lonely candle at her elbow shivered, brave and bold, providing a sanctuary of golden light amid the swaths of threatening black. She’d never been afraid of the dark, not really. Lyra had taught her to have courage, to keep her chin held high.

“Look to the sky, Jyn,” she had always said. “Even the darkest night will have stars to guide you.”

But Lyra was gone, buried in the ground last winter. And Galen wasn’t here, even though he should have returned a long time ago.

At only eight years old, Jyn understood too much. She knew it took several hours to reach Krennic Court, especially on their only horse, an old tired mare who couldn’t manage more than a plodding walk. She also knew Lord Krennic was not a forgiving man but her papa was determined. Stubborn too, sometimes, which did worry her more than a little.

Throughout the night before, the storm rattled at her window, furious and dark, until Galen had come into her room and swept her into his arms.

Jyn wasn’t afraid of storms either, but she was afraid of the way her father trembled all over, his broad palm cupped to the back of her head. Dread hung thick and cloying in the air while the storm raged and ruined, and a brave flicker of hope whispered in the dark that the damage wouldn’t be too bad, wouldn’t cripple them, wouldn’t bring them to their knees so hard that they were unable to rise again like they always had before.

But nothing was said. Not one little word. Jyn already understood.

Galen had only started holding Jyn like that after Lyra died from the fever, his tears sliding into her hair, his cheek pressed to the top of her head. But to Jyn, it felt too much like he was trying to remember her, to kiss her cheek one last time and he would be gone too and it made her hold on tighter to him in return.

In the morning, the storm had faded, a path of destruction left behind in its wake, the crops gone, drowned and washed away.

Jyn had helped Galen put in those crops in the spring, plowing straight and deep row after row, watering the mare, wrestling rocks out of the fields, and walking through the soft, pillowy dirt with her bare feet as she cast the seeds left and right, the seed bag bumping against her knee.

The storm had ruined all that hard work in one night. The barley lay flat against the earth, roots exposed, heads bowed and muddied.

In the silence, as Jyn had stood by her father’s side, surveying the damage of the wind and rain, she slipped her small hand into her father’s calloused palm. And she understood this as well, what it would mean for them, even though she didn’t want to.

It was too late to start a fresh crop. There would be no food for the winter. And Lord Krennic would not agree to allow anyone to stay on his land if he wasn’t earning a profit from it.

But Jyn didn’t know what would happen after that. It was a blank space of questions without answers apart from a vague, hazy uneasiness that something was coming, something that would leave more destruction than one storm had.

This had always been her home, this little piece of land tucked into the farthest corner of Lord Krennic’s estate, and if she were to lose it, if Galen and Jyn could no longer stay…they had nowhere else to go.

Her mama was buried here, beneath the massive, twisted oak behind the tiny cottage. A single rose bush, with deep, dark blossoms, marked the grave in place of a headstone. Lyra had protected and sheltered it from a small cutting, her one and only wedding gift, taken from her own mother’s rose bush years ago.

Jyn tended it every morning, checking the leaves for diseases and pests, removing the old blossoms that had faded. She never touched the petals that had fallen on the grave, curled and dried, leaving the faintest fragrance in the air. And it almost seemed as if Lyra was still alive, standing right beside her, smelling of roses, dirt beneath her fingernails, dark hair loose and wild in the wind, and a smile on her face.

Jyn pulled the candle a little closer now, wrapped her arms around her knees drawn up to her chest and waited for Galen to return. She just wished he would come home. Soon. He’d been gone all day and it was wrong. He promised to be back before dinner and her papa never broke his promises…

The heavy tread of hoof beats, slow and methodical, sent Jyn to her feet. She picked up the candle, one small hand curved close to the flame like a shield as she hurried to the door and opened it.

“Papa?” she said into the black of night.

The silhouette of a man stood over her, too broad to be her father. Jyn shrank back, suddenly feeling even smaller in the shadows than before, armed with only her sputtering candle. The visitor raised his lamp high enough for the light to cast his dark features in edges of pale gold.

“Dr. Gerrera,” she said, her voice shaky with relief and also a growing stain of dread. She peered past him and still, there was no sign of Galen in the distance. Her gaze flicked back up to Dr. Gerrera’s face.

“Is my papa…?” she started but couldn’t finish, couldn’t put that horrible thought into words, not with her mother’s grave only a year old. She couldn’t bury her papa too.

“He paid me a visit this morning,” Dr. Gerrera said. “Told me he went to speak to Lord Krennic, and to keep an eye on you if he didn’t return by nightfall.”

Slowly, a frown of confusion drew across Jyn’s face. “But…why?”

Dr. Gerrera shook his head. “He didn’t specify that part, I’m afraid, and I pressed him on the issue, believe me.”

Again, Jyn’s gaze flitted past Dr. Gerrera’s shoulder to the empty dirt road behind him. _Where are you, Papa?_

Then Dr. Gerrera was holding out his hand to her as he tipped his head towards his horse, tied to the post by the door.

“Would you help me make some tea for when he returns?”

Jyn looked up at Dr. Gerrera, the heavy-lidded eyes that had seen too much death, too much dying, too much suffering for one human to witness in a lifetime. He was tired too, the same tiredness she saw on Galen when the crops had been destroyed, left with no option but to beg for the mercy of a merciless man so he didn’t lose his daughter to fever and starvation and the cruelties of a bitterly cold winter.

Jyn nodded, took Dr. Gerrera’s hand, and as she stepped over the threshold, her candle guttered out.

***

Galen stood in the foyer of Krennic Court, feeling every bit a tired, worn out, old man. He wasn’t alone in his request for leniency in the face of the storm’s aftermath. Other tenants had already arrived to inform Lord Krennic that there was too much damage, too much loss, and it couldn’t be recovered in time for the winter.

Galen’s stomach twisted at the sight of so many weary faces, all of them, including himself, clinging to the last, fragile, trembling thread of vain hope. Maybe just this once, Lord Krennic would abandon his reputation for the sake of kindness. Maybe he would pardon one exception, one lucky farmer amid a dozen unlucky ones.

By the time Galen would finally be granted an audience with Lord Krennic, his chances of being permitted to stay on his land would be long gone. Lord Krennic’s patience was non-existent on most days, but he would never have enough generosity for so many of his tenants to remain living on his land without payment simply out of the sheer goodness of his heart.

 _A fool’s errand_ , Galen thought. _And we are all fools._

But he waited anyway. He’d left Jyn at home, unwilling to make his own child beg in Lord Krennic’s presence. She’d looked so small standing on the steps of their cottage, her twin braids half tossed apart by the whipping wind, her chin tilted up despite the storm’s destruction when Galen felt as if the whole world had settled on his shoulders and _crushed._

This may be a fool’s errand, a waste of time, but he knew he had to speak with Lord Krennic, he had to try. For Jyn. His stardust was so brave when he couldn’t bring himself to be. He would most likely leave Krennic Court as empty-handed as he had arrived that morning, but if there was a chance, no matter how small, that he could continue to provide for Jyn, to keep her close, then he would wait well into the night to speak with Lord Krennic if that’s what it would take.

And if Lord Krennic denied his request?

Galen didn’t like to think of that alternative but he found his mind wandering back to the possibility…the reality of it. It would be the workhouse for both of them.

He closed his eyes, swaying where he stood. His little Jyn, brave and solemn and kind, had survived so much in her short life already, harsh winters, sickness, hunger, the loss of her mother. He couldn’t put her through the workhouse too. She was strong, she was brave, but that would break even her fiery spirit.

“Mr. Erso?”

Galen’s head snapped up. Krennic’s butler gestured to the open door of the study.

“Lord Krennic will see you now,” he said.

His tone was bored and annoyed, and as he spoke, his gaze centered on a spot above Galen’s head instead of looking directly at him. Galen should have been used to such treatment from Krennic’s staff. He’d given up his pride long ago, after all, and he certainly entertained no amount of pride now as he walked into Lord Krennic’s study. But to be treated as if he was invisible because of the dirt embedded in his hands and his weather-worn face, browned by the sun, lined by the winds and the unforgiving landscape he lived off of…it still stung.

Lord Krennic stood by the window, his back to the room, hands folded behind him. His six wolfhounds were scattered around the floor, some lying down, others seated like gargoyles beside him. He wore only white and with the late evening sun streaming in through the window, he seemed to glow with an unearthly light.

It made Galen feel even filthier than he already was as he slid his cap off, bunched in his hands. Before his visit to Krennic Court, he’d washed and scrubbed himself as best he could but he carved a living from the earth every day. Dirt was in his shoes and his clothes and his hair. Dirt was in his bed and his food and even mottled his own daughter’s skin. He could never be free of it.

“I suppose,” Krennic said without turning around, “that you’ve come to tell me what many of my other tenants have already told me.”

Galen swallowed, willed his voice to be clear and steady. “Yes sir. The storm…”

Krennic raised a hand and Galen fell silent.

“Can you make up for the losses before winter sets in?”

“No sir.”

A beat of silence passed, a beat that was only a moment in time, but it stretched and stretched with such agonizing slowness.

“You’re terribly quiet,” Lord Krennic said, “for a desperate man. Others have come to me with tears in their eyes, some of them even on their knees.”

Lord Krennic didn’t turn, didn’t move from his position by the window, but Galen saw the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth, the flex of his fingers. Galen gritted his teeth. A fool’s errand, he remembered. This man knew no mercy. He was far too pleased with the suffering and hardships of his tenants to be a man worthy of Galen’s respect.

“My daughter – “

“Do you know how many of my tenants have children?” Lord Krennic cut in. “Most of them have far more mouths to feed than you. Your daughter makes no difference to me.”

Galen closed his eyes, fingers curled into the battered fabric of his cap until his knuckles went bone white. He tried to keep the anger from overruling his tongue, tried to keep the hot words boiling in his stomach from spilling out before he could stop them, leaving him with the lingering burn of regret.

“I’ll plant more next year,” Galen said. “Three times as much if necessary.”

“And if the same thing happens again?”

He hesitated. What could he say to that? He had no control over the weather, couldn’t predict when a storm might arise and sweep away the fruits of his labor.

“I fear I’ve been too easy on you, Galen,” Lord Krennic added. “Ever since Lyra’s death, you’ve taken advantage of it, making excuses and shirking your work.”

Galen sucked in a breath as if he’d been slapped, as if the mark of a hand upon his cheek was there, livid red with shame.

“Please,” Galen said, the word raw in his throat with how it pained him to place at Lord Krennic’s feet.

Lord Krennic turned slightly, one eyebrow raised. Galen had given him what he wanted. He’d pleaded. Lowered himself to proverbially kiss Lord Krennic’s boot. Anything more than that would be extraneous and useless. If Lord Krennic would not relent now, he would never relent no matter what Galen said.

“No,” Lord Krennic said. And there was a gleam in his eyes, dark with pleasure, at the look of dawning horror on Galen’s face as he slowly realized what Lord Krennic’s next words would be.

“It looks like it’s the workhouse for you and your daughter. I have a friend there. Tell him I sent you and he’ll look after you. I’ll also have one of my footmen retrieve your daughter for you. That’s more than generous, I think.”

Galen went rigid and when he spoke, his words were shivery and low. “There must be something I can do, sir. Anything but the workhouse.”

Lord Krennic turned back to the window, stroking one hand over the head of a nearby wolfhound. The wolfhound watched Galen with small black eyes, steady and unblinking and so, so still that, were it not for the tell-tale rise and fall of its ribs beneath the wiry fur, Galen might have thought the dog was a statue.

But he was familiar with Lord Krennic’s dogs. He’d seen the brutality they could inflict the moment their master gave the word to attack, a mere flick of his wrist and a single command. Rumors held that he kept his dogs half-starved in order to ensure they were always hungry, rumors Galen never paid much attention to until he saw the look in the dogs’ eyes now, predatory and wolfish.

Galen took a step towards Lord Krennic in the hopes to regain his attention. As one, the dogs rose to their feet, all six of them together. They made no further movement, simply watched Galen where he stood, circled around him in an arc. His only option was to leave through the door he had come in.

He’d tried. For Jyn. And he’d failed. They would wind up in the workhouse anyway, despite his best efforts to keep her safe, keep her close, to not lose her like he had lost Lyra.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Galen said. He hated the blade of panic shredding his words but he couldn’t stop himself.

“Good. I want you to leave. I would suggest you stop persisting in testing my patience. The result would not be favorable.”

Galen pressed his lips together, swallowing the bargains he ached to make, useless though he knew they were. He turned to the door and stopped, his fingers just short of the handle.

“Let me explain to my daughter first,” he said. “After the death of her mother…”

He trailed off and Lord Krennic sighed. The butler opened the door, one immaculately gloved hand curved around Galen’s elbow with an iron grip before he could open his mouth to protest.

“The workhouse, sir?” the butler asked. “Like the others?”

“His daughter as well,” Lord Krennic replied. “Send someone to fetch her. And if he gives you any trouble…”

Lord Krennic lifted his hand in a slight gesture, a silent dismissal to end his unfinished sentence. The butler nodded.

“Understood, sir.”

***

On the edge of town sat Dr. Gerrera’s house, modest and small, slightly tilted to one side, and smelling of laudanum. Jyn lingered in the barren and stoic sitting room with Dr. Gerrera’s lamp on a side table. He’d left her there two hours ago with tea that had grown cold and a handful of slightly stale sandwiches.

Then Dr. Gerrera had disappeared into the shadows of the house and Jyn didn’t follow him, didn’t ask where he was going. She kept completely silent, listening for the steady tread of the old mare carrying her father. But she heard nothing in the dark apart from her own breath, too harsh and too loud in the stillness.

Then a sound, a low murmur, a chant, rising and falling, rising and falling. She remained on the stiff wooden chair, the scent of cold tea and stale sandwiches and laudanum mingled around her. The voice grew louder and it sounded like Dr. Gerrera, the rough, wheezy tones, but…who was he talking to?

Jyn’s bare feet whispered over the wooden floors as she slipped from the sitting room, leaving the lamp to spit and sputter on the table alone. The hallway was bare and black, the walls ghostly white and empty as she tiptoed along. The voice was coming from the door at the end of the corridor, slightly open, just enough to show the shifting dance of candlelight splayed across the floor and spilling over the walls in gold and crimson.

Jyn peered through the crack in the door to see Dr. Gerrera in an empty room apart from a mirror on the table and candles peppered across the floor in a circle around him. His eyes were rolled back in his head until only the whites showed. His lips weren’t moving but the words pouring from his mouth were tangled and thick, guttural and dry.

Silence.

Dr. Gerrera stopped speaking and simply sat there, unmoving, unblinking, his hands on the table, palms up.

One by one, the candles flickered out, fizzling with a thin thread of smoke, reaching, reaching, reaching towards the ceiling, until only one candle remained.

“Stardust?”

Cold shivered over Jyn’s skin at the sound of her father’s voice, distant and far away, as if it came from a cave or behind a door, muffled to a hollow echo, a shadow of Galen’s true voice.

“Papa?” Jyn whispered as loud as she dared. She didn’t know why she was whispering but it felt right, like she wasn’t supposed to wake Dr. Gerrera from his strange sleep.

“Jyn? Where are you?”

Galen’s voice was sharper now, a little clearer, and coming from inside the room, though she couldn’t see him.

Movement in the shadows caught Jyn’s attention, a shift of deeper blackness against the gray of midnight. A hand formed from the mirror on the table, the mirror’s reflective surface turned liquid and murky, swirling with specks of silver, streaks of red, and branches of black. Fingers curled around the edge of the mirror, nails screeching against the rusted gilt, and pulled.

Jyn watched as Galen emerged from the mirror, flickering and shifting, as if she was seeing only a reflection of him in the surface of a pond, constantly disturbed by ripples and raindrops and bubbles.

“Jyn,” Galen said with a smile.

And Jyn’s heart _soared_.

This was the papa she remembered. The lines around his eyes crinkled when he laughed instead of etched deep and rough with worry. His shoulders weren’t stooped as if he carried an unbearable burden on his back anymore, he stood straight and tall and so, so proud. His hair was dark and smooth and no longer streaked with gray. He was happy.

Galen held out his hand and beckoned for her to come closer.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re together now. Nothing can harm us.”

Jyn took a step into the room, crossed the threshold, leaning forward on her bare toes, every line of her body aching for her father’s embrace. She’d been so worried but he was here now and all she had to do was run into his arms.

Jyn reached for him, fingers a trembling inch from touching that specter of her father’s waiting palm…

Dr. Gerrera sat upright in his chair and the mist in his eyes cleared, returned to their usual dark brown color.

“No, Jyn – “

But Jyn wasn’t going to be separated from her father again. Dr. Gerrera rose from his seat with such speed that his chair clattered backward and he lunged for her. Jyn skirted away far too easily and latched onto Galen’s hand.

The shock of cold _hurt_. It was as if ice had seared into her skin, into her muscles, into her bones. Galen’s face melted, drifted to the ground and spilled across the floor like ash and dust and sand. Where Galen had been before stood a creature only partly human, with endless pits for eyes and broken, jagged teeth in its gaping mouth.

“Jyn,” the voice said again but it was no longer the familiar tones of her father. It was rasping and dry, scraped from a throat that had no warm flesh to soften the words, just bones, rough and pale white in the dark.

Jyn strained against the creature’s hand clamped around her fingers. “Let me go,” she said through gritted teeth.

The creature smiled and Jyn wanted to look away, wanted to shrivel and recoil at the grotesqueness of the action, but she forced herself to meet the creature’s black stare that seemed to pull the dark around her like a shroud, like a veil to cover her eyes.

_Even the darkest night will have stars to guide you._

“Release her,” Dr. Gerrera said.

Jyn glanced at him, pleading silently that he would help to pry this creature’s grip off of her. But he stood a safe distance from her, his hands at his sides.

The creature paid him no mind and kept its gaze trained on Jyn. “I feel something inside you,” it said. “Something you and I have in common, little Jyn.”

Its other hand came up and Jyn fought against the creature even harder now, her heels sliding on the floor until splinters bit through the tough calloused skin of her heels and left behind beads of blood buried in the wood grain.

The creature pressed its hand to Jyn’s chest and she felt the unforgiving hard bones carved into her sternum, a cage squeezing around her frantically pumping heart. The taste of roses flooded into her mouth, her nose, thick and cloying in her throat until she choked.

“Sorrow,” the creature hissed with pleasure. “The death of your mother, and now the worry that you might lose your father as well, has left you hollow. So hollow and empty.”

Next to Jyn, Dr. Gerrera growled and closed his eyes, muttering under his breath as fast as he could, taking up the same position he had held when Jyn had first entered the room. The creature watched him for a moment then turned back to Jyn and she gasped, curved forward over the dead hand that clawed into her.

“Sweet Jyn,” the creature purred. “I have a gift for you. Something to grow between the spaces of your broken heart.”

“I don’t want it,” Jyn spat.

With the creature’s free hand, it reached into the darkness of the mirror and twined a black thread around its bone-white finger, spinning and spinning until a small flower bud formed on a long stem, gray and flat as the shadows it had been woven from. The creature kissed it and a crimson blush seeped into the petals then touched the chilled flower to Jyn’s lips.

“A rose fed by your sorrow,” the creature said. “Beauty to blossom from your pain. A gift that will never leave you for as long as you live.”

The last stalwart candle shivered then went out. The creature’s coldness slid away from Jyn and she was alone, she felt it, a little girl lost in the dark.

***

Gerrera didn’t speak as he took Jyn from the room. She was so slight, so little in his arms, but the weight in her heart, the flower that had taken root there, would become a burden one child should never have to bear.

Jyn matched his silence as he carried her into the sitting room again and began to tend her feet. Her gaze darted over his face in that way young children had to gauge whether or not she was in trouble. Finally, Jyn spoke.

“You know what happened to my papa, don’t you?”

Gerrera couldn’t look at her, this child damned to a half-life, saddled with the dead housed inside her. Haunted, possessed, never to grow into an old woman, never to be surrounded with her children, never to have the comforting memories of a full life.

“I know he’s alive,” Gerrera said.

Jyn sat up a little straighter in her chair and she would have pulled her feet clear if he hadn’t caught her ankle, holding her in place.

“When can I see him?”

Gerrera’s thumb dug into the soft arch of Jyn’s foot and she grimaced, her hopefulness tempered by the realization that something still wasn’t right.

“You shouldn’t have done what you did, Jyn,” he said.

“But Papa…I saw him.”

The way her words faltered, just the slightest bit, told Gerrera she didn’t know what to make of the things she’d seen and he didn’t blame her. One minute, her father was speaking to her, the next it was a starved spirit, seeking for the softness of flesh, the reassurance of a strong, steady heartbeat to wrap around like heat after the cold winter of death.

“No, Jyn,” Gerrera said. “That was not your father.”

She frowned. “Then who was it?”

Gerrera sighed as he wrapped Jyn’s feet in bandages. “A spirit. When you touched it…the spirit claimed your body for its own.”

He could tell his words were making no sense to the poor child but he continued, if only to provide the smallest comfort, feeble though it was. She could never be accurately prepared for what the morning would bring.

“It lives from your grief,” he said, “and it will do so until you are one and twenty.”

He knew she was beginning to understand, and yet, somehow, she was unafraid. She tilted her chin up, met his gaze straight and true.

“Will it hurt me?”

“Yes. Many, many times. And then it will stop and nothing will hurt you anymore.”

That’s when the understanding fully blossomed across Jyn’s face and still, there was no fear. Even at eight years old, she could look death in its grim face without the hint of a tremble.

***

The change came as the sky melted from midnight blue to the soft rose dust of dawn.

Dr. Gerrera had answered some of her questions, though it seemed as if he wasn’t entirely willing to impart all of his knowledge about the creature, the _spirit_ , that was living inside her now. After that, he’d taken her to the attic, a musty, stale, cramped little space above the kitchen, with a single window shaded by a gnarled old tree that hid the horizon from view.

As Dr. Gerrera left her – to sleep, he said, after the long day she’d had – she heard the slide and click of a lock, heard the rasp of a key leaving the keyhole empty. There was no reason to lock her into this room, unless he was afraid. Of her. Of the spirit and its rose.

Jyn dozed off, curled up into a pile of quilts and blankets that smelled of old lavender and mice. And when dawn came and a kiss of golden light graced her skin, it felt as if her bones were cracking apart.

It began with a flare of cold through her chest, rising along her neck like a blush and she sat up with a gasp of surprise. Fingertips, clammy as fish skin, wrapped around her, frigid palms pressed over her eyes until she saw only darkness. Fingertips that were not her own wandered down the ladder of her ribs, danced along her spine and _yanked_.

With a crack like the snap of a broken branch, Jyn’s spine came out of place and she whimpered at the white light of blinding pain. Her rib cage stretched wide, a gruesome flower made from her body, from her red, red lungs spreading open like a bloody rose. And there in the center, gripped tightly in a shadowy hand, was her heart.

***

Jyn woke in the attic, shivering with cold. The window was open to reveal the night sky freckled with stars, shining bright and bold against the midnight black.

Had it been a dream? Her father’s prolonged, unusual absence? The creature Dr. Gerrera had called a spirit? The icy hands covering her eyes with such complete darkness that there were no stars to be seen?

Jyn crossed to the window and tugged it closed, the rusty hinges whining from disuse. As she crawled back beneath her blankets, she stopped at the sight of a dark red stain against the tattered quilt’s fabric. Gingerly, Jyn touched it with one finger, expecting the slick heat of blood.

Instead, it was smooth as silk, soft, flexible. She picked it up.

A rose petal lay in her palm, a rose petal – she knew – that had come from her own heart.

The nightmare was real.

 

 


	2. One

** Twelve Years Later ** **  
**England, 1849** **

Cassian had been on land for less than an hour and he missed the open sea already. The ocean had always been his home, with swelling, merciless tides and relentless winds that came and went in less than a moment. He belonged among the rough company of his crewmen and their calloused gallows humor. He ached to have the sharp salt air in his lungs, accompanied by the sweet, faint promise of impending rain.

But there was no pitch and roll of the deck beneath his feet now in the small English harbor town. The street under his boots was infuriatingly steady and smelled of damp earth.

Cassian had been forced to part ways with his beloved ship, the  _HMS Rebel Hope_ , at the shipyard for repairs. She would be laid up for at least a fortnight, perhaps longer. One too many skirmishes over the years with pirates, storms, and the jagged shallows had left his ship in need of more serious attention than the hurried patch up on the move.

"You're very brave," Kay said with a disapproving sniff at the crowded street.

"Hardly," Cassian replied.

"You're attempting to live in the country. If I may be so frank, sir, it's practically foreign territory."

"I lived there for thirteen years of my life."

"Thirteen years you barely remember. Don't pretend you wish to return, Captain. I know how much you dislike it. By pretending, you are only wasting your breath and fooling no one."

Cassian sighed. Of course he had no desire to return to Festfield Hall, his home in name and inheritance alone. But he knew what Chirrut, his former tutor, would say if he refused yet another return trip.

_ Your staff, young Master Andor, loyal and steadfast as they are, deserve to see your face every once in a while. _

Cassian hated to admit it but…Chirrut had a point. Damn him.

While Cassian had fled to the sea, his staff had remained at Festfield, despite his repeated attempts to liberate them from their duties. He had even stopped paying them for an entire year, though it made him uneasy and sick with guilt. Finally, his staff dwindled away until only the butler, Baze Malbus, and the groundskeeper, Bodhi Rook, had stubbornly remained. Along with Chirrut, though Cassian had outgrown the need for a tutor years ago.

He supposed, in a way, it was their home too. As much as he wanted nothing to do with the place, they weren't willing to see it waste away. That made them better men than he was...

"My offer remains," Kay said, pulling Cassian from his thoughts. "You could join me in London."

Cassian cast an appreciative smile in his direction. For years, Kay had been by his side, his second in command, from the time Cassian was a seasick cabin boy, throughout the rocky learning experiences of his midshipman years and his lieutenancy, to the present day when Cassian was captain of his own ship.

Kay could have surpassed him long ago, but he didn't appear inclined to take that step. Instead, he chose to remain under Cassian's direction, forever his first mate, even when there was no ship for Cassian to command.

"Thank you, Kay," Cassian replied. "But I haven't been attending to Festfield the way I should. My father would not be pleased if I allowed the estate to fall apart on my watch."

Kay tucked his hands behind his back. "Your father is no longer alive, Captain. I fail to see how relevant your father's wishes are in regards to the management of Festfield Hall when the estate is your property and not his."

Cassian didn't reply right away. He took no offense at Kay's comment. Kay had always been blunt and to the point, straightforward in a brutally honest, take-no-prisoners way. At times, Cassian was grateful for it, especially on his ship when he couldn't afford to lose a second in protecting his men from the sea and sky that showed no forgiveness nor leniency.

At other times, though, Cassian wished Kay would learn a modicum of tact on occasion.

"It's my responsibility," Cassian said, quiet and serious under the hum of the crowd swirling around them like so much flotsam. "Of course I don't want to go back. My parents are gone. It's an empty house with empty hallways and empty rooms."

"But you retain a certain level of emotional attachment, correct?"

Kay was studying him, his gaze roaming over Cassian's face in an effort to understand. Kay had no family, no estate to look after. He had been abandoned at birth, cast adrift in this world with no ties of any kind apart from Cassian.

"My father and mother," Cassian said, "dedicated a generous portion of their lives to Festfield. They wished to create a sanctuary for me, their only child, where I would be safe." He blew out a breath and shook his head. "That's what Chirrut tells me anyway."

"Do you believe him, Captain?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

Kay shrugged, the slightest lift of his shoulders beneath his naval uniform.

"Mr. Imwe employs too many riddles for my taste. If a man speaks, in my opinion, he should speak plainly."

"You've met him only once before."

"In the past, you have related portions of his correspondence to me until I feel I know him well enough to fashion a general description of his character."

Cassian stopped and looked up at Kay, a small smile at the corner of his mouth. Kay cast a wary glance in his direction.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he said.

"I've had an idea."

"Not a very good one, I imagine, judging by your expression."

"Stay with me at Festfield for a while."

Kay blinked, taken aback. "I think not, Captain." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Though I appreciate the offer."

"You could get to know Chirrut a little better. Perhaps form a more sound opinion of him instead of the scraps I've fed you here and there from his letters."

"My opinions are perfectly sound, thank you. There's no need to challenge them."

"You could become better acquainted with Festfield and why it's necessary that I see to the upkeep of the estate and the grounds. You may be able to advise me on certain areas that I might be lacking in."

"But I have no experience with maintaining estates, Captain. My presence at Festfield Hall is entirely unnecessary."

Cassian paused. There was one angle left, a slightly lower blow than he would have liked, but it would prove the most effective, he was sure of it.

"It would make my visit easier," he said, "having a friend at hand."

Kay bit back a small sound of frustration and turned away. Cassian knew he wouldn't refuse now, not when his loyalty was called into question.

"I certainly hope," Kay said at last, "that you don't expect the pair of us to walk there. How many miles is it? Ten? Twelve?"

"Fifteen," Cassian said, triumphant. "My groundskeeper, Bodhi, should be arriving with the horses to fetch us any minute now."

"You mean he's coming to fetch  _you_. I am not expected."

"We will make accommodations for you, Kay. It's not a problem."

"As long as I don't have to sleep in the stables. I had made reservations for some very nice rooms in London, you know."

"And I'll reimburse you for them, I promise."

Kay waved him off. "Ridiculous."

Cassian couldn't help feeling light with relief that Kay would be accompanying him to Festfield. Briefly, he had entertained asking Kay to join him before, but he hadn't carried through with it for fear of taking advantage of Kay's friendship. Kay already spent nearly every waking moment at Cassian's side.

But there was guilt too, just a pinch of it beneath the surface. Kay had no interest in Festfield Hall. He'd made it quite clear at every possible opportunity what his thoughts were on the subject. He believed it was a waste of time for Cassian to return to an estate that was falling apart with age and rot, an estate Cassian never truly felt comfortable inhabiting for any length of time.

Despite the mingled chaos of guilt and relief, Cassian didn't regret taking advantage of Kay's friendship now. Kay could have refused, even though Cassian was well aware he wouldn't. At least Cassian wouldn't have to face the hollow, haunted hallways of Festfield alone.

***

Bodhi picked a path through the muddied streets, grateful to be on horseback instead of on foot as he took in the churn of activity around him, the swirling skirts of ladies, the tall hats and crisp waistcoats of the men, and the brown shadows of farmers, tenants, and tradesmen in between, dirt caked into their skin, fingers rough and calloused from work.

He'd never really liked towns much, especially the busy ones. It made him uneasy, as if he was constantly in someone's way and he needed to move, to stop making a nuisance of himself everywhere he turned.

A field of masts spired in the distance to mark the shipyard, and Bodhi knew Cassian wouldn't be too far from his beloved  _Rebel Hope._

At one time, when Bodhi was barely old enough to remember, he had been on board a ship, marveling at the towering mast and the whipping snap of the sails in the wind. He had felt a heated spike of jealousy too, watching the sailors as they scrambled through the web of rigging high above the water, fearless and confident, their world reduced to nothing but sky and sea, free as birds.

That was when his mother had brought him to England, buoyed on a wave of hope that they could build a better life for themselves here, together, just the two of them.

But his mother never saw England, never saw the end of that voyage. Ships had held a bittersweetness for Bodhi ever since. He regarded them with a distant sort of fascination, tempered over the years, and that was enough for him.

A chorus of voices rose, tinged with the red flare of conflict like a blister, and Bodhi pulled up short, spine rigid, shoulders hitched towards his ears. Even though he had spent most of his life in England and spoke as neatly as the next Englishman, he hadn't been born here and often times people took offense to his presence. Baze accepted him. Chirrut accepted him. And Cassian did too, at least Bodhi liked to think so, but it was hard to tell with Cassian sometimes, so stoic and rarely present.

Once Bodhi left the safety of Festfield Hall, he never took acceptance for granted. He'd learned the hard way to listen for the bite of anger flying in his direction, learned when to cut his losses and run.

Today was one of those days. A group of men were gathering in the street, the first indications of a mob, fueled with indignant rage. At the center of the group was a man on horseback clad in white. Not a speck of dirt dared to mar the sweep of his cape or the slick shine of his black boots. 

Bodhi recognized Lord Krennic, had heard more than one story of his cold hearted cruelty to his tenants until they were taken to the workhouses and replaced with new tenants, desperate ones.

Six wolfhounds twined in and out of the gathering of men like smoke, silent as ghosts, and when Lord Krennic gave a single short command, the dogs surged to his side, flanking his horse like soldiers until he was separated from the crowded street as well as the men looking to him for leadership.

Bodhi gave the entire spectacle a wide berth and took the long way around to the shipyard.

He spotted Cassian waiting at the entrance with another man, tall and long-limbed, fair haired, wearing a navy uniform. Bodhi dismounted, twisting the reins in his hands.

"Mr. Andor," he said. "I didn't realize you would be bringing company with you…"

Cassian grimaced. "Please, Bodhi. It's Cassian. Mr. Andor was reserved for my father and I have no intention of replacing him."

Bodhi dipped his head in acknowledgement. He'd had Cassian's permission to be on a first name basis ever since they were young boys, racing horses together. But Bodhi could never bring himself to maintain that level of familiarity with the master of the house while he was in public and no longer within the safe confines of Festfield. People had a tendency to eavesdrop when they pretended not to, and he wouldn't risk accusations of rising above his station. That would only draw the wrong kind of attention to himself, attention he didn't want.

Instead, Bodhi simply said, "Yes, sir."

Cassian studied him for a moment but didn't protest. He gestured to his companion.

"Bodhi, this is my second-in-command, Kay. I know it's rather last minute, but he'll be staying with us for a while."

Although Kay didn't seem too pleased with the idea.

"I'm afraid I only brought two horses, sir," Bodhi said. "If I'd known…"

Cassian shook his head. "It's fine. I'll ride with you."

He took the second horse's reins from Bodhi and tossed them to Kay. He caught them, looking at the animal in dismay and no small amount of dislike.

"Something wrong, Kay?" Cassian said.

"In all honesty, Captain," Kay replied, "I'm not entirely sure how to steer this animal without a rudder."

Cassian bit the inside of his cheek as he glanced at Bodhi.

"Bodhi, would you mind?"

While Bodhi gave Kay a quick lesson on riding, a cheer rose in the street from where Lord Krennic's gathering was growing stronger in numbers. Cassian raised his head and his eyes darkened with concern.

"Is there any excitement I should know about, Bodhi?" Cassian said without taking his gaze away from the street.

Bodhi didn't want to answer. He wanted to disappear to the safety of Festfield Hall. It wasn't a direct order, he could ignore it. But knowing Cassian, he would put himself in the thick of the mess in the street, asking questions to find out why these men were becoming irate and agitating into a potentially dangerous situation.

"They're preparing to hunt the beast," Bodhi said.

"What beast?" Cassian said.

"The one on the moors."

Kay paused mid-reach of the saddle. "Captain," he said, slowly, as if a lazy thought had just occurred to him. "Don't we have to pass through the moors to reach Festfield Hall?"

"Yes, we do," Cassian replied, absently, his attention focused on the mob of men.

Kay pulled himself into the saddle and Bodhi waited to see that he was settled before he joined Cassian on his own mount, gripping fistfuls of Cassian's uniform as Cassian coaxed the horse forward, passing right by Lord Krennic and his men.

Bodhi closed his eyes and turned his head to the side, away from the mob. He'd seen gatherings like this before, how their indignant wildfire of fury swept across anything in its path, burning, always burning, until a swath of destruction was left behind. Bodhi's presence alone could ignite that wildfire on his heels, provide them with some way to unleash their pent up heat against an intruder, a foreigner on British soil.

"What does this beast look like?" Cassian asked.

"No one knows, sir," Bodhi replied. "There are theories, of course. Some say it resembles a large cat. Others say it's a dog. Still others say it's the spirit of a murdered woman searching for her lost child."

"Old wives' tales," Cassian muttered under his breath.

"If no one knows what it looks like," Kay said. "How can they hunt it? Is this a normal country custom, Captain?"

The mob faded into the distance as the edge of town came into view and Bodhi's grip on Cassian's coat eased slightly.

"I suppose," Bodhi said, "they'll begin their search where the body was found this morning."

Cassian went stiff. "What body?"

"Some tenant from a nearby estate. The poor man's throat was ripped out."

***

This was a terrible idea and Kay knew it. An image of Festfield Hall loomed in his mind, riddled with pests and all manner of vermin, mold blossoming in every corner and the floor rotting away beneath his feet.

It might be an exaggeration, but then again, with Cassian's prolonged absences from the estate, perhaps it was closer to reality than Kay cared to consider.

Kay had seen Festfield Hall once. A sprawling, rambling estate, composed of bold, Gothic architecture with Spanish accents, a statement of strength, determination and wealth to make up for the lack of title the Andor name carried with it.

Cassian's father had earned his wealth from the seas as a merchant, carrying all manner of goods to and from England, but no matter how successful his ships were his Spanish heritage marked him and his family as less than welcome in high society.

Thus Festfield Hall became a kingdom of its own, with grand walled in gardens, a stable to house nearly two dozen horses, a lake filled with lilies and exotic fish retrieved from the most distant and obscure territories in the world.

Jealousy nudged between Kay's ribs, twisting and squeezing around his heart, though he would never admit it. Why would Cassian ever leave such a place?

But Kay knew, deep down, that Cassian cared for Festfield Hall in his own way. Not once did Cassian consider selling the estate, getting rid of it while he spent his years at sea. Any mention of the property was with a wistful look in his eye. Dusty, faded memories and an inheritance - no matter how large - could never replace what he had lost but he couldn't part with what little he had left to him either.

Kay didn't even have that much, scraps and remnants, cobwebs and rot. He was a blank slate. No memories. No purpose. No legacy or inheritance to carry on, whether it was crumbling around his ears or not. He'd never had a family, apart from Cassian anyway. And Festfield Hall served as a reminder of his non-existence, his inhumanity in a world teaming with humans, all connected in some way to each other, except for him.

The sun had tucked below the horizon by the time Kay, Bodhi, and Cassian reached the moors. The barren landscape was shrouded in purple haze like a dream, wrapped in fog as delicate as lace. And to top it off, a fine mist of rain began, slipping down Kay's collar and creeping along the length of his spine.

Kay sighed and pulled his hat a little lower over his eyes to ward off as much of the icy rain as he could.

"Only a few more miles left," Cassian said as he rode alongside Kay.

"I believe you said that an hour ago, Captain," Kay replied. "You're repeating yourself."

"It was true then and it's true now."

Kay shifted in his saddle, already sore from the ride, and tried not to think of the clean, dry carriage he should have been in by now on his way to London.

"My only hope," Kay said, "is that we will reach Festfield Hall before sunrise."

Cassian cast a sideways glance in Kay's direction.

"Don't tell me those old wives' tales are making you uneasy, Kay."

"No," Kay replied, irritated. "This damned saddle is what's making me uneasy."

Cassian ducked his chin to hide a smile beneath the brim of his hat. Just as Kay opened his mouth to protest further, his horse came to a stop so suddenly that he swayed forward and nearly lost his seat. He snapped his mouth shut and gripped the horse's mane to steady himself.

"What the devil…?" he started but his words died in his throat before he could finish.

There, a lithe shifting shadow against the ghost-white fog. A figure, human in shape, but not human  _enough_. There were too many angles, too sharp and unnatural. Where eyes should have been was nothing but endless pits of black. The growing darkness seemed to spread and bloom around the figure like ink in water. Kay could see the gleam of bone as the figure came closer, gliding over the uneven rocky ground as if it was floating.

Kay's horse snorted, backed up several agitated steps and would have bolted if Kay hadn't clutched the reins so tightly that the leather was imprinted on his palms.

Cassian's horse stamped in place and Kay could see the way Cassian wrestled with the reins, his back rigid, shoulders straining, to keep the horse in check.

The figure lurched to a stop with such a piteous cry of sheer agony that Kay felt it scrape every nerve in his body. Cassian's horse reared up, hooves kicking at the air, and Bodhi dropped to the ground, landed on his feet. He caught the bridle, smoothing his hand over the horse's nose, speaking soft nonsense until the horse quieted.

All the while, Cassian never took his gaze from the figure on the moors.

"What is that… _thing_?" Bodhi whispered, huddled close to the horse's shoulder.

The figure's dead empty eyes fixed on him. Bodhi retreated a step, blindly grabbing for the back of Cassian's saddle in preparation to pull himself up.

Then, with the most hideous sound Kay had ever heard, the figure's head snapped back, chin jutted towards the sky, arms splayed wide. Darkness unfurled like feathers and wings. Bones groaned in protest, cracked, and peeled aside, a door fashioned from sternum and ribs.

_ A door to a cage, _  Kay thought.

The last of the shadows fell away and the grinding of bones went blessedly silent until there was only the heaving breath of the horses in the stillness.

Where the figure had stood before, now there was a young woman, hardly more than twenty, if Kay guessed correctly. Darkness and bones sifted away from her, falling to the ground like ash and dust, a grim, gray snow.

Her skin was pale, white as the fog surrounding her, and she wore only a simple cotton shift that did nothing against the cold rain, judging by the way she was shivering. Her dark hair hung in wet ribbons around her face as she squinted at Kay, Cassian, and Bodhi, hazy and disoriented, swaying on her feet.

She blinked once, twice, with a slight shake of her head as if to clear her vision and when she looked at them again, her eyes narrowed in such a way that was all too familiar to Kay. He'd seen it on the faces of countless sailors before. Desperate men who found themselves outnumbered and on the losing side of the fight. Men who clawed and kicked like wild animals to survive, determined to live even if it took the very last breath in their bodies to do it.

To Kay's horror, Cassian slid off of his horse and took a step towards the woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is SO MUCH research that goes into this so if there are any details that are off, PLEASE let me know! I will fix it asap and love you forever! *MUAH*


	3. Two

Cassian had no explanation. Questions and concerns, certainly. But not a reasonable conclusion for the skeletal figure that had morphed into this impression of a woman before him, like a wisp of smoke in the dark. And as she stood there, staring at him, silent as the grave, a thought whispered in his mind.

_A ghost._

Then he scoffed at himself for entertaining such an absurd idea, even for a fleeting moment. There was no such thing as a ghost. Bodhi’s old wives’ tales were getting to his head in all the wrong ways.

He should ride on. Kay would tell him so without hesitation. This woman, whoever she was, didn’t appear inclined to accept an offer of assistance if he gave it. Creeping dusk sent hollow darkness across the planes of her face, hiding her eyes, rendering her cheekbones into slim white razors against the shadows. Loneliness bore down on her shoulders like a mourning shroud, worn to familiar thinness just like the threadbare shift that clung to her body, transparent in the rain.

That’s when Cassian saw her hands. Blood dripped from her fingers, red gloves coating her arms up to the elbow. After the immediate flicker of alarm had passed, his gaze darted over her a second time for wounds, injuries, and he saw nothing apparent. If it wasn’t her blood, it belonged to something – or someone – else, and he could only hope that it was from a small animal she had killed to ease her hunger.

_They’re preparing to hunt the beast._

She wasn’t a beast any more than she was a ghost. But according to Bodhi, people had been murdered on the moors by this “beast” over the past ten years with rising frequency until no one traveled after sunset for fear of being attacked. And yet this woman was out here, alone, gone mad by the looks of her with blood on her hands.

People would jump to conclusions. A woman like her might incite any manner of theories and tales, a majority of them damaging.

And if she was guilty? If she had committed murder?

Then Cassian would turn her in. But not to those men on the hunt, hungry to take a life under the guise of retribution and vengeance. Whether she was innocent or guilty, it didn’t matter. When they found her, she would be dead, sins bruised into her neck with rope, her body left to rot, unburied, swaying from a tree.

Cassian dismounted. He tossed the reins to Bodhi as he took a step towards the woman.

“Captain,” Kay said, just as Cassian had expected. “I must advise against such action. It would not be wise to approach – “

Cassian raised a hand for silence. Standing only six feet away from the woman now, he could see that there was no fear in her eyes, only watchful wariness, like a cat crouched, tail twitching, hackles raised and claws flashing in and out, kneading the earth in warning. She wasn’t a beast – he refused to entertain that thought any more than he could believe she was a ghost – but she wasn’t scared into helplessness either.

Regardless, she would catch her death, soaked through as she was. And, he suspected, she was running a fever as well, judging by the flush of her cheeks in her otherwise moon-pale skin. Her shoulders were hunched up towards her ears, fingers balled into fists at her sides as she struggled – and failed – to keep from visibly shivering.

“You’re cold,” he said. He shrugged his long coat off and held it out to her. His uniform’s jacket wouldn’t do much against the chill of the rain but at least he would be warmer than this poor woman.

“I don’t need your pity, _Captain,”_ she said through her teeth, putting as much venom into the final word as possible to show his rank held nothing of importance to her out here in the wilderness of the moors. “Leave me alone.”

Cassian met her hard stare unwavering. He folded the coat and edged closer to place it on a nearby rock. The woman startled at his nearness, shuffled back a step, stumbling in the process. The hem of her shift fluttered up and he caught a glimpse of the purple and blue blossoming around her ankle, the skin swollen and tight. She put no weight on her foot, hardly touching her bare, filthy toes to the ground.

She frowned at him.

“I’m fine,” she rasped, her voice hoarse and raw, from lack of use or illness he couldn’t tell.

“Could be broken.”

“I’ll manage.”

She swiped a strand of wet hair out of her eyes, impatient, as her gaze switched from Cassian, to Bodhi, to Kay, before returning to Cassian again. She was estimating an escape route, he would guess, calculating which of the three men she could fight and win her freedom. Cassian was the only one on the ground, making him the easier target. But she swayed towards Bodhi, predicting that he was the weaker link.

She would be in for a rude surprise then. Bodhi had handled far more hostile creatures than her.

“There’s no need to run,” Kay said, reading the same aggressive body language that Cassian had. “Clearly we outnumber you. And while we are on horseback – another advantage in our favor – you are only on foot, not to mention injured. You hardly have the capacity for the extreme physical exertion required to get away.”

“Kay,” Cassian growled, slowly turning to glare over his shoulder. “Not now.”

“Merely stating fact, sir.”

“Perhaps another time.”

“Yes, Captain.”

It was only a slight movement on the edge of Cassian’s vision that caught his attention. A flick of the woman’s fingers, the glint of something pale like a minnow in the shallows of a pond. She was armed, a knife probably, hidden so well in the palm of her hand that it was almost invisible.

“Are you the one they call the beast?” he said.

The woman flinched, barely detectable, but the tendons in her neck went stiff and her jaw clenched.

“Yes,” she said. “You’d better go if you want to stay alive.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then you’re a bigger fool than you look.”

“Kay holds the same opinion. He never lets me forget it.”

The woman’s lips tightened and she turned her head away. Cassian dared to take another inch of ground.

But that was too close, within striking range, and he saw the attack coming, the burn in her eyes, the strain in her muscles. The knife’s edge concealed in her hand darted towards him, curving up towards his middle where he would bleed the most.

Cassian twisted to the side and the weapon went wide. He grabbed her wrist, twisted, and the knife came free. He released her and she limped out of reach again. He held up her weapon – a piece of bone that had been sharpened to a fine point. Not even a real knife.

“Impressive,” he said. “If a tad primitive.”

Then he threw it as hard as he could into the moors. The sliver of white winked end over end and vanished.

“I would appreciate a proper introduction,” he added, “before you try to kill me again.”

“Devil take you,” she spat.

Cassian didn’t even blink at the insult. “Do you realize you’re being hunted?”

The woman went still. She looked over Cassian, Kay, and Bodhi again in a different way this time, with a spark of concern instead of planning an escape.

“Not by us,” Cassian added.

“Then what do you want?” she said, eyeing him.

“Your name.”

She hedged, shifted and grudgingly admitted, “Jyn Erso.”

Cassian removed his hat and bowed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Erso.”

She huffed. “I’m not a lady. There’s no need to be polite.”

“A woman, no matter her standing in society, deserves the respect that is due a lady.”

Jyn shook her head and Cassian could see the derision in her eyes. She didn’t believe him. Words wouldn’t earn her trust that easily.

“I still don’t know your name, _Captain.”_

Again, the bite she gave that word, as if she despised the taste of it in her mouth and couldn’t get it off her tongue quick enough.

“I’m Cassian Andor.” He gestured behind him. “This is my groundskeeper, Bodhi, and my first mate, Kay.”

A sound, muffled by distance into softness, made Bodhi rise up in the saddle, searching the horizon.

“Sir, I think…” he started, slowly. His eyes widened and he nodded, confident in his certainty. “Dogs, sir. The hunting party is getting closer.”

Cassian swore under his breath and returned his attention to Jyn.

“They will hang you,” he said, all pretenses of courtesy gone.

Jyn squared her shoulders, tilted her chin up, defiant. “They haven’t caught me yet.”

“With that bad ankle and the fever you’re fighting, the odds are against you.”

For less than a moment, Cassian glimpsed the surprise in Jyn’s eyes that he noticed what she had been trying so hard to hide.

“Why does it matter to you?” she said. “If I have killed before, then I deserve to hang.”

There was a tell-tale hitch at the end of her words though, a faint misgiving that told Cassian she was bluffing.

“Beasts,” he said, “don’t provide a warning before they attack as you did for me.”

The dogs were louder now, baying in the darkness, the sound rolling over the moors like thunder, an impending storm.

“Those men,” Cassian continued, “are looking for someone to blame. They’re not thinking clearly at the moment. All they want is blood and in your current state, you are a convenient target.”

She rocked back on her heels, turning to go.

“My estate is only a mile north of here,” Cassian added, relentless, even as she faded into the shadows. “Bodhi can look after your ankle to see that it isn’t broken. You will be free to come and go as you please. As a gentleman, you have my word.”

“A gentleman’s word,” she said on a short, bitter laugh.

Then her eyes drifted closed and she swayed. Cassian waited, expecting her to drop right there, exhausted, starved, freezing.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

And she limped into the fog, swallowed by the dark.

***

The small flame of white on the horizon sent heat raging through Jyn’s body. Krennic and his damned dogs again. She would never be rid of them.

Dr. Gerrera had kept her hidden for the better part of her life, while she was young and the spirit had unchallenged control over her as if she was a limp puppet. But Gerrera had been dead for four years now and Jyn was on the moors, floating in the wide open spaces between earth and sky like the ghost she had become.

She couldn’t outrun Krennic forever. He would find her one day, maybe only the dried out, hollow husk of herself with an insatiable spirit to welcome him. It wasn’t really a victory but at least it provided a small measure of comfort to think about during the long nights without end.

He had done something, all those years ago, to make her father disappear, she was sure of it. She just…didn’t have the details. But Krennic didn’t know that and he became restless, asking around if anyone had seen “the little Erso girl”, with slick, smooth charm and false concern. As long as he didn’t know where she was, she remained outside of his control and he couldn’t rule over her with fear like he did with his tenants, like he had with her father.

So Krennic hunted her. With dogs and angry men like the animal he believed her to be.

Jyn’s ankle buckled, sending her to the ground. She put her hands out to stop herself and sank up to her elbows in icy water.

Two weeks ago, she had twisted her ankle running from one of Krennic’s hounds. She tried to keep her weight off of it, tried to bring the swelling down as much as she could, but as soon as the spirit claimed her body at sunrise, she had little control over her actions. The spirit might be limited by her body’s capabilities but it didn’t feel her physical pain the way she did.

By the time Jyn was returned to her body come nightfall, her ankle hurt worse than before and she knew she would never heal.

Her fever was steadily growing worse, too. She couldn’t stay dry, sleeping under the stars on beds of moss and heather. She couldn’t get warm. She couldn’t catch enough rabbits and birds to keep the hunger from eating away at her belly.

Although she wasn’t so desperate that she would take help from that _captain_. For all she knew, he was one of Krennic’s hunting party. And if he wasn’t, he had offered her – dirty, filthy creature that she was – a place at his estate. He hadn’t introduced himself as a lord or duke, but the crisp, clean state of his uniform and the way he carried himself, shoulders rigid, spine straight, suggested he was a man who was used to giving orders and being obeyed.

Jyn would obey no one.

 _Only one more year,_ she thought. _One more year and this will all be over._

She had never considered giving up. Not once. She was a farmer’s daughter, raised with dirt under her fingernails and her face to the sun, despite ruined crops, unyielding earth, and merciless storms. She clung to that now, fighting her way to the last possible minute of twenty-one years that she had been allotted.

Jyn struggled to stand again, her fingers gone numb and stiff in the water. Her jaw ached from her chattering teeth and her shift stuck to her body like a second skin from the rain. The ground seemed to tip beneath her and she dropped to her knees again, waiting for the spinning to stop.

Footsteps set Jyn’s heart at a frantic pace. Here in the silver of the fog, she couldn’t see the stars or the moon, couldn’t track the passage of time by the shadows and the shift of darkness. It was only gray and white and listless.

How long had she been willing her tired body to move? Had Krennic already caught up with her?

Jyn shook her head. No, he couldn’t have. The dogs would have reached her first and she was certain she hadn’t seen any of them yet.

Then she raised her head and Cassian was striding towards her, wreathed in fog. Tall black boots, sharp uniform a stark white and midnight blue, gold buttons marching down his chest. The long coat he had offered to her before was folded in one hand but before she could refuse it a second time, he knelt beside her and draped it around her shoulders.

She braced herself, waiting for Cassian’s façade to falter and she would finally realize what he really wanted.

But as soon as the coat settled over Jyn’s shoulders, a small sound of relief fell from her lips. Instantly, she wished she could suck it back in.

The wool, though scratchy, was heavy and Cassian’s body heat still lingered. The misting of rain rolled off of the fabric in tiny beads like diamonds instead of soaking into her flimsy shift. For the first time in too long, she was warm and dry.

“I said leave me alone,” Jyn croaked, her voice nearly wrecked by the fever, even as she tugged the coat tighter around her.

“One question,” Cassian replied. “Then I’ll go.”

She sighed. “Fine. What is it?”

“Did you kill that man this morning?”

Jyn faltered. Her body would have belonged to the spirit, encased in darkness after sunrise. If she fought hard enough, she could gain moments of clarity when the spirit had control. For a precious few seconds, she viewed the world of daylight through a lens shrouded in smoke, gray and flat. She could hear what the spirit said but she couldn’t speak herself. She could feel the spirit move, like phantom pain beneath her skin in a body that didn’t belong to her anymore, but she couldn’t move on her own.

Those moments were rare. At one time, Jyn thought she could kick and claw and bite her way out of the spirit’s hold by sheer stubbornness alone. In the end, all she earned for her trouble was a flex of the spirit’s fingers around the rose of sorrow it had carved out of her heart and Jyn would be brought to her knees in her world of twisted dark, suffocating with grief, unable to breathe.

The spirit could have killed someone and Jyn had no way to tell.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. Then she added, louder this time, “You should stay away like I told you to.”

“I thought I handled myself quite well, considering your earlier attempt to stab me.”

She grimaced but before she could protest, a howl like the wail of a violin picked up. Five more howls followed, eerily close in the fog, echoing louder and louder only to fade and start a new round.

The dogs must have caught the scent of blood from the rabbit she’d killed earlier.

A spike of panic lanced through Jyn’s chest. She was too weak to ward off Cassian in his fancy uniform. If she couldn’t escape him, how could she possibly hope to escape Krennic and his dogs?

But if Jyn could get her hands on Cassian’s horse…

“All right,” Jyn said. “I’ll go with you.”

***

Kay didn’t like this. Cassian led Jyn back, his coat wrapped around her shoulders. There was something in the way Jyn looked Kay over with her shadowed eyes and her ghostly skin that made him watch her, mistrust squirming in his gut.

But what could he do? He had already tried to warn Cassian, more than once, and Cassian only brushed him off. When he had started after Jyn, Kay almost ran him down to stop him, urging his horse between Cassian and the route Jyn had taken into the fog.

“Captain,” Kay had said. “Please consider, just for a moment, the implications of what you’re about to do.”

“I have thought about it, Kay. You saw the state she was in.”

“And you can’t save every person in need who you come across.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

Kay had met Cassian’s gaze, his horse shifting beneath him, grazing at the heather. He had seen Cassian focused before, blinded to everything else around him except for keeping his men safe and his ship afloat.

But this focus was different in a way that Kay was unfamiliar with and he didn’t know how to respond to it. He could tell it was just as deeply rooted though and Kay knew how useless it would be at attempting to change Cassian’s mind.

“If those men catch her,” Cassian had continued, “they won’t listen to what she has to say. Even if she’s innocent.”

“I have strong reservations on that front, Captain.”

“You’re welcome to keep them. I’m not asking you to agree with me.”

For the first time in several minutes, Bodhi spoke, his words quiet but clear and to the point.

“If she is guilty, you would be bringing a murderer under your roof.”

Silence. Wind made the heather hiss and the distant howling of the dogs took on a shivery, drowned quality, smothered by the moors and the shadows.

Finally, Cassian said, in a heavy, low voice, “I’m aware of that.”

Of course he was. Kay could tell by Cassian’s tone alone that he had wrestled with that realization, and yet he arrived at the same conclusion anyway. He would take the gamble, risky though it was, and he would claim full responsibility for it.

That’s what worried Kay the most. Cassian had never shirked responsibility for anything in his life. And Kay wondered when the day would come when that weight crushed him because he refused to save his own skin just once.

Now Cassian was offering to assist Jyn onto his horse, but Jyn was already swinging herself up, riding _astride_ without hesitation or even a blush, as if it was normal and her shift’s hem wasn’t bunched around her thighs, obscenely improper. She sat the horse more comfortably than Kay did, lacing the fingers of one hand into the horse’s mane. Jealousy licked across his skin.

Then Jyn dug her heels into the horse’s sides and the horse kicked forward.

And pivoted in a tight circle back to Cassian.

Jyn made a small noise of frustration deep in her throat as she looked down at Cassian, his hand on the bridle. She got nowhere. For one blessed, beautiful moment, Kay’s jealousy was tempered by satisfaction.

“You take me for quite the fool then,” Cassian said, gazing up at Jyn steadily, unperturbed by her attempt of escape.

“My mistake,” she replied with such arrogance in her voice that Kay gritted his teeth. “I certainly hope you don’t expect an apology.”

He snorted. “No, I don’t.”

“Good. I’ll try to be more subtle next time.”

Cassian’s hand clamped around Jyn’s ankle before she so much as twitched in his direction.

“ _Don’t_ kick me,” he said in warning.

“That would be too obvious.”

Kay might not understand why Cassian wished to help Jyn, of all people, but at least Cassian didn’t wholly trust her. Though the realization was small comfort, doing precious little to ease the slick squirm of mistrust in his gut, it meant Cassian hadn’t lost his common sense entirely. Kay still had a chance to talk to him, make him see reason.

Preferably before Jyn Erso tried to murder them all in their beds while they slept.

Cassian kept a firm grip on the reins as he settled into the saddle behind Jyn. The natural posture she had carried while seated in the saddle before suddenly went stiff and rigid as Cassian’s arms circled around her. Kay braced himself, barely breathing, while Cassian willingly put himself so close to Jyn. She’d already tried to stab him once. And now he sat with his chest to her back, his elbows drifting away from his body, leaving his ribs, his lungs, his heart exposed.

Kay was the one who taught Cassian to fight dirty, to kick and bite, to claw and scratch. Living on the streets, trundled between filthy orphanages, Kay protected what little he had by whatever means necessary. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t clean but it worked.

In return, Cassian taught him to fight with clarity and knowledge. One well-placed hit to crack a bone, another to bring his opponent to his knees, and nothing more was needed after that. It was precise and brutal in a way Kay’s all-out method of fighting had never been.

Cassian knew, better than anyone, to keep his elbows close to his body to protect himself. But he seemed determined to grant Miss Erso as many chances as she liked to spill his blood.

***

Jyn couldn’t remember the last time she had allowed anyone this close to her. She could feel Cassian’s chest at her back, the occasional brush of his chin against the top of her head, and once, when the horse stumbled on uneven ground, Cassian’s hand had flattened against her middle, holding her in place. He wore gloves, the material sopping wet and cold from the rain, but she could still feel the heat of his hand through her shift and she sucked in her stomach as if she could pull herself away from him.

But as she contracted from his touch, she unwittingly pushed more of her back against him and all she wanted to do was slide off of the horse and run, throbbing ankle be damned.

Then Cassian’s estate came into view and she released a long, low exhale of dread.

Jyn had grown used to the dark, defining one shadow from the next, capable of picking out what other people – normal people with normal lives in their normal bodies – couldn’t see. Tonight though, the moon was full, painting silver linings over everything it touched, and the fog had thinned to pale fingers of white, granting Jyn a clear view of the estate.

“Festfield Hall,” Cassian said, his breath warm at the back of her neck.

Withered and brittle vines snaked up the face of the manor house, as if some creature was slowly pulling it underneath the earth, smothering it, crumpling it until it was no longer proud and tall against the sky but bowed and broken. The west wing didn’t appear to be used at all, with gaping black holes where windows should be, haunted, empty eyes, too dark for stars to shine.

“You live here?” Jyn said in disbelief.

Cassian hesitated. “Not really.”

She twisted around to look at him with a frown of confusion.

“I own it,” he added. “But I haven’t been home for…” He trailed off and his gaze shifted away, shaking his head.

“Eight years,” Bodhi put in, his voice so soft in the night that Jyn almost didn’t hear him.

Cassian urged the horse through a pair of black iron gates, jagged and rusted away in places. A circular crest sat at the top with a flame at the center, though Jyn didn’t care to ask what it meant.

A road led up to the house, bordered with gnarled trees, mangled by disease and neglect. She hadn’t believed Cassian to be as pure-hearted as he made himself out to be, hiding her from Krennic and his dogs and his men. But as she watched the craggy face of Festfield Hall come closer and closer, with its matching towers like horns and its winding entryway that gaped like a mouth filled with crooked teeth…Jyn’s doubts continued to blossom, rotten and fetid inside her chest.

Why would Cassian promise her protection only to bring her to this forgotten old place that looked as if it would crumble around her ears at the first whisper of wind that happened to blow in the right direction?

She needed to leave. Now. Before Cassian could take her into that house that seemed as if it was being slowly dragged to Hell. She had glimpsed Purgatory once, in a face of bone and darkness, and she wouldn’t do it again.

She waited until Cassian guided the horse to the front of the house, but when he stopped, silence descended.

The dogs, howling so consistently during their ride here, went dead quiet.

“Get inside,” Cassian said, his voice low with intent and urgency.

Jyn gritted her teeth. He was right and she knew it, but the realization burned. She had spent years outrunning Krennic and his dogs. She knew they were desperate, starved and beaten by Krennic until they were wild things that understood nothing but the taste of blood and the fight for food.

Now that the dogs had gone silent, it meant they were close, too close. And they were waiting. She was the rabbit in the underbrush. As soon as she ran, ran from Cassian and his ghoulish house, she would fall into the teeth of the dogs.

Cursing herself for not moving sooner, Jyn ignored Cassian’s offered hand and she dismounted, sliding to the ground. She steadied herself against the horse’s neck as her ankle pulsed with fresh pain.

The door opened and a figure emerged, bearing no candle, only a cane.

“Young Master Andor?” a male voice said, carrying tones of an accent Jyn didn’t recognize. She couldn’t see much of him, standing in shadow as he was. But there was the outline of his hands, resting one atop the other on his cane, the knuckles worn from age, the skin clean of dirt. Not a working man then. “Have you brought company home at last?”

“Yes, I did. I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind. For years, I was certain my efforts at teaching you to be a good master of the house were all in vain. We’ll see if any of those etiquette lessons managed to stick.”

“I’m sure you won’t let me forget a single thing. But before then, Chirrut, please see our guests inside while I speak to Bodhi for a moment.”

Chirrut gestured to the open door. Jyn hesitated. She glanced past him into the darkness of the house, a throat waiting to swallow her down. He extended his cane and tapped the side of her knee lightly.

“No need to rush off,” he said. “You’re with friends now.”

“I believe,” Kay said as he approached, “that matter is entirely up for debate.”

He brushed past, giving her a wide berth well out of reach.

Then Jyn’s brief window of opportunity was gone. Again. She had wavered a second too long and Cassian’s hand came within two inches of touching her lower back. His gloves were still on but, with so little interaction around other people, Jyn recognized the nearness of a presence that wasn’t her own. And for some reason, she was more keenly aware of his presence than anyone else’s.

“Bodhi will tend to the horses,” Cassian said. “And he will meet us in the sitting room when he’s done. We may or may not be getting additional visitors before the night is out,” he finished, his gaze shifting towards the road again.

“The sitting room,” Chirrut said, delighted.

“That is where I’m supposed to entertain guests, yes? You taught me that.”

“Perhaps more of those lessons did stick after all. I’ll tell Mr. Malbus to put some tea on.”

Cassian barely hid his sigh as Chirrut disappeared into the darkness of the house, the echo of his cane tap, tap, tapping along the floor then faded out. Cassian moved to follow but when Jyn didn’t budge, he stopped and looked at her.

“Is something wrong?” he said.

“I don’t need to be entertained,” she said. “I need a place to wait for the dogs to pass. Then I’ll be on my way.”

Cassian let his hand drop to his side and he folded his arms behind his back. “That’s not entirely true.”

Before Jyn could open her mouth to protest, he continued.

“Your ankle should be looked after.”

Again, she knew he had a point. But she couldn’t afford to wait that long, to see her ankle tended and bandaged. She had to be moving, leaving this place and soon, putting distance between herself and Krennic.

At Jyn’s hesitation, Cassian said, “The dogs may remain nearby for hours.”

She closed her eyes. “I know.”

“You can warm yourself by the fire and dry your clothes.”

Jyn shook her head. She didn’t want to go in that house, despite how many tempting promises Cassian made of hot tea and warm fires, things she hadn’t had in years.

But the stillness outside, the deadness of it, was so complete that it screamed. Demons or dogs, it didn’t matter. She had faced them both and managed to come out alive before. She could do it one more time.

Jyn clutched Cassian’s coat a little tighter around her, took in a bracing breath, and stepped into the house.

The foyer was swathed in gauzy shadows like webs, twining and twisting and tumbling from the ceiling down to the floor. An elegant staircase across from her parted to either side like rolls of parchment. Overhead, she could just make out a chandelier, mostly obscured from sight apart for the dripping crystals, winking like stars in the sky.

Off to her right, spilling from a doorway was a shaft of light, thin and pale as paper.

Suddenly, Jyn felt small, too young with an understanding too large for her little body. The last time she stood in the dark with light at the other end of the hallway, she never saw the sun again. Her palm settled over her heart where those cold, cold fingers had clawed into her chest.

Before Jyn could decide whether to run after all or face the room at the end of the foyer, the door behind her opened. She jumped, spun around.

Bodhi entered, raising a hand in reassurance at Jyn’s sharp look.

The way he glanced at Cassian, the furtive, rabbit-like quickness of his movements as he pulled the door shut and slid the bolt home, set her on edge.

She was locked in. With strangers. They had seen her shift, seen the change come over her. How would they use that knowledge against her? She knew they would. It was only a matter of time. Gerrera hadn’t rejected her despite her unnatural fate, but he had kept his distance, locking her away in a musty old attic.

Would Cassian do the same? Or worse?

There was a thick brass candlestick to her left on a small table next to a vase of dead and brittle roses. She could beat a few heads in with it, if it came to that. _When_ it came to that. She would have her freedom, one way or the other.

“Bad news?” Cassian said to Bodhi.

“It’s Krennic. He’s almost at the gates.”


	4. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for reading, commenting, leaving book and movie suggestions and getting excited over this fic with me! You are all angels ♥

Chirrut found Baze in the kitchen, though Baze was rarely anywhere else. Heat from the hearth breathed across Chirrut’s skin, accompanied by the sharp, sweet scent of spices – anise, fennel, a little ginger. A far cry from the usual bland English fare. And as Chirrut took a deep breath, for one blissful moment, he was back in China with Baze harvesting herbs from the garden of their small monastic community tucked into the mountainside.

“You’re daydreaming again,” Baze said.

“Reminiscing. There’s a difference.”

“Doesn’t sound of much use either way.”

Chirrut ignored Baze’s underhanded jibe and sidled closer in an attempt to identify what Baze was making. Roasted duck with ginger sauce, a rare treat for Cassian’s return.

“Smells wonderful, Mr. Malbus.”

The steady slice of Baze’s knife thunked into the wooden cutting board without pause and that was the only answer Chirrut received. But he felt the slightest huff of pleased laughter under Baze’s breath, the faint hitch of his broad frame at Chirrut’s shoulder.

“Did Captain Andor return in one piece?” Baze said, the sweep of his calloused hand across the cutting board a rasping accompaniment to his question.

“He did,” Chirrut replied as he settled in a chair across from Baze. “Carrying the sea with him as always.”

“Meaning his clothes stink of fish. I’ll see that Bodhi gets the washing done in the morning.”

Chirrut waited, reveling in the effect his next piece of news would have.

“Young Master Andor brought company as well,” he said at last.

Baze went still. A small smile twitched at the corner of Chirrut’s mouth. Surprised silence descended, a dozen unspoken questions boiling in Baze’s mind, though he was too stubborn to ask a single one. So Chirrut decided to put him out of his misery and not make him wait any longer than necessary.

“His first mate, Kay, will be staying with us for a while.” Chirrut couldn’t help the dramatic pause before he added, “As well as a young lady who seems to be of some interest to our captain.”

Baze said nothing as he moved to the hearth. The rattle of iron. The hiss and crackle of logs shifting in the fire, flames snapping in protest. The light clank of the tea tin as Baze retrieved it from the cupboard and pried the lid off, releasing a fresh swell of herbs into the already infused air. He measured out a helping of tea, enough for company and more to spare.

He was preparing himself, Chirrut knew, considering what the presence of a lady could entail for the Andor household.

“This lady,” Baze ventured slowly, careful to presume nothing, especially when it came to Cassian. “Is she…?”

One word drifted in the air, too fragile to speak.

_Eligible._

The thought of Cassian Jeron Andor entertaining thoughts of matrimony to a real flesh and blood woman, neither to his ship nor to the sea, made Chirrut duck his head to swallow his laughter. Naturally, the rest of the household had hoped for a lady’s hand for many years but the older Cassian got, the more time he spent at sea away from home, that spark of hope faded.

Besides, Chirrut didn’t believe Cassian’s intention in bringing the lady home with him had anything to do with matrimony in the first place. It was more likely born out of his unwavering sense of duty, inherited from his mother’s iron will and his father’s sense of compassion, a heady combination, prone to bouts of selfless acts such as this.

“We haven’t been properly introduced,” Chirrut replied. “It would be indecent of me to ask when I don’t even know her name.”

Disapproval radiated off of Baze, heated as the flames of the hearth at his back.

“You must have noticed something,” he insisted.

Chirrut spread his hands. “I’m a blind old man, Mr. Malbus. I never pay attention to such details.”

Baze huffed and Chirrut smothered a smile. Baze would have no choice now but to leave the comfort of the kitchen and his beloved hearth to satisfy his curiosity about their new guest. Otherwise, if Chirrut gave him all the answers to his questions, Baze would only continue to take solace in the orderly business of preparing food instead of polite conversation which seemed to pain him a great deal.

“I can say with confidence,” Chirrut continued, “that the young lady must be hungry. As Cassian carried the sea with him, she carried the wilds of the moors with her. Wind and dirt and rain.”

 _And blood,_ he thought but didn’t say.

The smell of it, thickly sweet, cloying in the back of his throat like cotton, had been unmistakable. But the concern he had heard in Cassian’s tone didn’t seem related to any major injury, though the woman’s steps did limp and shuffle a bit unevenly, indicating discomfort.

“The heat of a fever rises from her skin as well,” Chirrut went on. “As to any family ties, I cannot say.”

Baze paused, considering. “Do you think she crossed his path on purpose?” he said, almost…carefully, as if he had not enjoyed putting the thought into words but it had been lurking at the back of his mind for too long to let it fester there anymore.

“After his money, you mean?” Chirrut said, delighted at flattening Baze’s attempts for tact and propriety in handling the subject.

Baze grumbled. “If you feel you must put it that way.”

“There isn’t much money to be had. Young Master Andor isn’t a wealthy merchant like his father. The Navy doesn’t pay nearly as well as trade.”

“She doesn’t know that.”

“Rest assured, Mr. Malbus, she doesn’t appear to have such an inclination.”

Baze stared at Chirrut hard, and though Chirrut didn’t see it, he could feel it. But he pretended not to notice. After a minute, Baze gave up and clanged a few pots and pans around to show his displeasure at Chirrut winning that particular argument.

“You sound glad of Captain Andor’s decision,” Baze said. “To help this woman, whoever she is.”

Chirrut lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Perhaps she will divert his attention from the sea for a while. Keep him on land and in our company longer than usual.”

Baze snorted in disbelief. Then, after a pause, “There’s something you’re not saying.”

Chirrut hummed in amusement. “Always, Mr. Malbus. My thoughts are my own.”

“You know what I mean.”

Baze retrieved the kettle from the fire and the rush of water hitting the porcelain teacup was the only sound in the stillness.

Chirrut had sensed another presence before, a foreign presence, one that Cassian had not announced, one that the others seemed to be aware of yet unsure how to respond to it. And when the lady had passed into the house, Chirrut had smelled roses on her skin, a strange contrast to the scent of the moors – morning dew and dusky heather.

No, he realized as an afterthought. The scent of roses. It had not been _on_ her skin but _beneath_ it. Tempered by her blood. Pounding in time with her pulse.

There had been something else, too, alongside the roses. Something cold and sharp like an impending snowfall that sent Chirrut’s nerves curling in on themselves. He had his suspicions but they were too new, fresh, and such a tangle that he wouldn’t mention them, not even to Baze.

“I feel,” Chirrut said instead, “that this young lady carries an unbearable burden with her.”

That would have to be satisfactory for now. He wouldn’t say anything in depth on the subject until he knew more.

Sugar whispered into the sugar bowl. Silver tinkled, the rounded echo of a spoon, as it was slipped into the creamer.

“I suppose,” Baze said slowly, “this burden you mention is not in reference to her sudden reliance on Captain Andor’s good will and generosity, regardless of her reasons for imposing on him.”

“That would be correct, Mr. Malbus.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what you have in mind.”

“Correct again.”

Baze’s hands settled on the worn wooden tabletop with firm patience. They often came to this stalemate, a game of waiting to see who would cave first. And Chirrut always found it entertaining to butt heads with Baze, to test Baze’s seemingly boundless patience and watch him fume in measured silence, refusing to give Chirrut yet another victory.

But not this time.

“Tea is getting cold, Mr. Malbus,” Chirrut said lightly as he stood.

Baze gave a heavy sigh and picked up the tray, his palms whisking against the smooth metal handles. Chirrut led the way out of the kitchen and towards the sitting room in search of answers.

***

Time seemed to slow as Jyn watched Cassian cross the front lawn to the gates in the distance, his dark blue uniform jacket barely visible in the shadows. Krennic was visible though, glaring white against the black of night, more terrifying than any apparition. His massive gray stallion was restless, stomping and pawing in place when Cassian approached.

Jyn’s fingertips skimmed the chilled glass of the window, her breath achingly still in her lungs. She didn’t hear the dogs, but the flicker of a torch floated closer. Then two more torches joined the first.

Then five more.

Ten.

Twelve.

Too many to count.

Cassian was out numbered, one man against a mob. If Krennic, his dogs, and his men believed she was in the house, nothing and no one could stand in their way. At any moment, she was certain she would see Cassian turn and point in her direction. Even if he decided to keep his mouth shut for now – a concept she didn’t remotely believe would happen – he couldn’t prevent Krennic from hanging her now.

“Would anyone care for some tea?”

Jyn startled at Chirrut’s voice. He moved so quietly, she hadn’t heard him return to the foyer. But there he stood, next to an open door with light, gentle and welcoming gold, cast behind him like a halo. He carried no tray or cup, but she could smell the spice of tea somewhere in the gray dismal house.

Jyn didn’t respond and turned back to the window. She needed to know the moment Cassian gave her up so she could run. She couldn’t afford to be diverted for even one precious second.

Bodhi, who had been lingering at the periphery of Jyn’s vision since she had arrived, stretched a hand towards her in an offer of reassurance.

“Cassian will manage,” he said, his voice low enough that only she could hear him. “Krennic won’t get anywhere near you.”

But as Bodhi’s hand came within an inch of brushing her elbow, Jyn retreated, shifted closer to the table with the candlestick.

“You work for him,” she said, more of an accusation than a statement.

Bodhi hesitated, his hand hovering between them. Then he drew back and nodded.

“Since I was a little boy,” he said. “His father took me in. His mother insisted that I received the same education that Cassian did. I was raised at Cassian’s side as an equal, sharing the same books, the same tutor, and we went riding together in the afternoons.”

“It doesn’t seem as if you’re treated as an equal now.” Jyn cast a pointed glance at his clothes, his brown waistcoat fraying at the cuffs, his right sleeve patched more than once at the elbow, stitches neat but straining under the stress of use. “Tending his horses. Wearing the attire of a stableman instead of a gentleman.”

Bodhi spread his hands, looking down at his sleeves as if seeing them for the first time. “I consider it an honor and a privilege to live and work in the Andor household for as long as I have. Cassian has been more than generous with me.”

Jyn had little experience with household staff. There had been one or two occasions when she had visited Krennic Court with her father or mother, watched the maids scuttle around in silence, eyes downcast, unnoticed, watched the butlers and footmen, rigid and severe and also silent.

Then she had lived with Gerrera who rarely allowed patients into his house when Jyn was around, let alone any sort of hired help.

But the longer Jyn studied Bodhi, the less she believed him to be one of those stiff, unspeaking staff members like what she had witnessed at Krennic Court. He didn’t appear to remain loyal to the master of the house out of fear, desperation, the need for employment. And he didn’t appear to be mistreated. Poor, perhaps, but the house was just as worn and frayed as Bodhi’s clothes.

“Regardless,” Jyn said as she returned her attention to the window. “I would prefer to wait here until a solution has been reached.”

Bodhi nodded and crossed the foyer to join Chirrut.

“And what of our guest?” Chirrut said. “Will she be coming as well?”

“She will be along when she’s ready,” Bodhi replied.

Then Jyn was alone in the foyer. She glanced at the candlestick. There was no one here to keep her from taking it, bracing herself with a weapon. There was no one here to stop her from running out some other door and disappearing into the night.

Before Jyn could make a decision, movement outside smothered any thoughts of escape. Krennic wheeled his horse around and left. The torches of his men trailed after him, swallowed by the dark. The phantoms of his dogs flickered in and out of the low brush before they were gone, too.

Cassian hadn’t given her up after all.

When he returned to the house, Jyn stepped back and as Cassian closed the door, he raised his gaze to meet hers. The guarded resentment she had protected herself with before felt out of place and clumsy now, too stiff to wield.

 _You kept your word,_ she thought but didn’t say.

Instead, she said, “There’s tea. Over…there.” She gave a vague gesture towards the room at the end of the foyer. Tea was a safe subject, directing his scrutiny away from her for a moment, brief though it was.

Cassian inclined his head and sighed. “Miss Erso – Jyn,” he quickly amended. “After such an eventful evening, I would greatly appreciate an explanation.”

Jyn had known this moment was coming as soon as she had been spotted on the moors. But a cold, heavy stone of dread settled in her stomach with the weight of finality anyway.

“You won’t believe a word of it.”

Cassian retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to her. “Clean yourself up as best you can. We’ll go from there.”

***

Cassian could never deny that Jyn looked strange on the moors, as if she lingered on the edges of reality instead of partaking of it. But she looked even stranger in his sitting room, her bare toes curled into the Persian rug beneath her, to brace herself or to obtain traction before she ran for the door, he couldn’t tell.

She took one glance at the sitting room and pulled up short, her shoulder bumping against his. Chirrut sat in an armchair as he poured tea. Bodhi perched on a settee by the fire, his hands spread wide for the warmth. Kay moved to the window when Jyn entered, his back to the room. And Baze lurked in the background.

After brief introductions, Cassian motioned to a chair by the fire across from Bodhi. Jyn didn’t move. While this was a normal evening for Cassian, surrounded by familiar faces, it wasn’t normal for anyone else who might think the idea of taking tea with his staff, in the sitting room no less, was ludicrous.

But that wasn’t the reason behind Jyn’s concerned expression.

“Shouldn’t we discuss this in private?” she whispered.

“This is private,” he replied. “No one in this room will speak a word of tonight’s events, I promise.”

Jyn’s gaze slid over to Kay, doubt evident on her face.

“Including Kay,” Cassian said.

Kay pressed his lips together with a cold look in Cassian’s direction. “Yes, sir,” he said with an edge of iciness in his tone.

And yet, Jyn still refused to move.

“It may be of interest to you, Miss Erso,” Chirrut said, his hands gliding through the motions of pouring tea without hesitation or pause. “That this house has provided sanctuary more than once before.”

“Why would that interest me?” Jyn replied.

“Even a rose has a bed of its own to rest in from time to time.”

Cassian heard Jyn’s sharp intake of breath but she kept her features schooled well enough that the only tell-tale sign she was in any distress was the clench of her jaw.

Chirrut stood from his chair and held a cup of tea out to her.

“You and your secrets will be safe here,” he added. “Just as the captain promised. I believe you’ve already discovered he’s a man of his word.”

Slowly, Jyn accepted the tea but her hands trembled so violently that the cup and saucer chattered like teeth. Chirrut returned to his seat and nothing more was said. Cassian glanced at Baze. Baze, standing at the back of the room with his arms crossed, simply shook his head.

It was normal for Chirrut to speak in riddles and anecdotes, proverbs and parables. Cassian, as well as the rest of the household, had grown accustomed to not knowing what on earth he was talking about.

This time, it was different. Jyn knew the full meaning of what Chirrut had said. And it left her shaken, rattled. She hadn’t flinched at the threat of hanging but the mere mention of a rose had cracked the stone face of her composure.

Reluctant and stiff, Jyn inched across the room and settled on the very edge of the chair Cassian had indicated. She shoved her rattling teacup onto a table next to her elbow, her fingers restlessly pulling and straining the fabric of Cassian’s handkerchief.

“It’s best to start at the beginning, Miss Erso,” Chirrut quipped as if nothing had happened. “The sequence of events tends to make more sense that way.”

Jyn blew out a breath, closed her eyes and finally stopped fidgeting.

“I am cursed,” she said. The words dragged out of her with such effort that she winced.

A pause. Chirrut’s spoon rattled in his cup as he stirred in a helping of sugar.

“Cursed,” Cassian said slowly, marveling at how calm he was when he felt anything but calm. It was late. He was tired, cold, wet, and he wanted to sleep. But he fought down his impatience in order to listen. The more he listened, the faster he could find a resolution to this mess.

“As in…” Bodhi ventured. “By a witch?”

Cassian stifled a sigh. Bodhi sounded like he had no problem believing Jyn right away.

“By the dead,” Jyn replied, rubbing her thumb over a blood stain on the handkerchief. “A spirit, if it’s necessary to be that specific.”

“Young Master Andor,” Chirrut chirped. “You should bring guests home more often. It hasn’t been this exciting around here in years.”

“Captain,” Kay said through his teeth. “You can’t really believe – “

Cassian raised his hand for silence. Kay growled and walked out. Cassian knew he hadn’t been fair with Kay all evening but Kay wanted to talk, analyze, interrogate and now wasn’t the right time for that.

“Go on, Jyn,” Cassian said.

Jyn hesitated but in the end, she nodded. “When I was little, my father disappeared.”

What she didn’t say was louder than any confession.

_He left me behind._

“Fathers disappear all the time,” Cassian said. “It hasn’t put other children…”

He trailed off. Should he really be playing along with this “cursed” theory? Jyn might appear lucid, for all intents and purposes, but the mind could be powerful. Some delusions generated comfort where none could be had. He wouldn’t fault her for that but he wouldn’t accept it as real either.

“It hasn’t put other children in a condition such as yours,” Cassian finished.

A glint of defiance gleamed in Jyn’s eye. He’d struck a nerve. She didn’t want to tell him any of this, certain she would be criticized for it, judging by how reluctant she had been to give him the truth up ‘til now.

“Let her finish.” Chirrut raised two fingers to signal to Cassian for silence. The same gesture Chirrut had used when tutoring Cassian years ago. He hadn’t been home in eight years, hadn’t been under Chirrut’s tutelage for even longer, but some things never changed.

“My apologies,” Cassian muttered to Jyn. “Please continue.”

“My father’s absence didn’t do this to me,” Jyn said. “When he didn’t return, a friend of the family came for me. Dr. Gerrera.”

“A good man,” Baze said, taking a step forward to stand behind Chirrut’s chair. “I met him once or twice when his medical practice was strong.”

“Then you know he did everything he could to find out what happened to my father.”

Baze nodded in agreement.

“No one had seen or heard from my father,” Jyn added. “It was as if he simply…”

“Disappeared,” Bodhi said in a small voice.

Jyn plucked at the handkerchief, not meeting the eye of anyone in the room, and when she went on, her voice was heavy with fatigue. “Dr. Gerrera never said it directly to me but I…knew. He believed my father was dead.”

“You had reason to believe otherwise,” Cassian said.

“I still do. He’s alive out there, somewhere.”

“After Dr. Gerrera took you in,” Bodhi said. “What happened? I thought he wasn’t practicing anymore.”

Jyn glanced down at her hands. “He died four years ago. Pneumonia.”

Cassian’s grip on the armrest of his chair tightened as the reality of her statement sank in. He dreaded the answer he would receive but he had to ask anyway.

“Have you been alone since then?”

Jyn said nothing. That was answer enough.

The silence stretched and stifled and finally Cassian took a breath to speak but Jyn raised her voice and changed the subject.

“Gerrera performed a séance,” she said. “To find Papa’s spirit.”

“I suspect,” Chirrut said, “considering your current situation, Dr. Gerrera’s decision did not work out well.”

“No. It didn’t.” She rubbed her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut tight. Then the words started coming, short and angry. “I wasn’t supposed to be there. At the séance. But I went in anyway. A restless spirit – malevolent, Gerrera called it – sensed my presence and when I reached out to touch it…” She spread her hands, horrified at herself. “The spirit claimed me, body and soul.”

After a pause, Chirrut said quietly, “If I may ask, Miss Erso. What does that entail? Are you saying a demon has possessed you?”

Jyn lifted one shoulder as if uncomfortable with the prospect. “Not in the traditional sense of the word. The spirit inhabits my body as a demon would but instead of using my body to talk, speak, move…it breaks me. It rips me apart, crushes my bones.” She released a shuddering breath. “And I am awake. For every agonizing second of it. I feel it all.”

She raised her head and her gaze met Cassian’s. He saw the shadow of pain, years of it, darken her eyes. Spirits and séances were too fantastical for him, but he understood what pain was, bearing down on the lungs until there was no air left to breathe. That kind of pain he could believe. She was telling the truth about that much at least.

“How do we know you’re…you?” Bodhi said. Such a question coming from anyone else might have been interpreted as fearful, but Bodhi didn’t seem afraid despite his obvious belief of every word Jyn spoke.

“I am in full control at night until sunrise,” Jyn replied. “During the day, the spirit is…” She left that thought unfinished and tugged at the sleeve of Cassian’s long coat. “I don’t know what it looks like. It could wear my skin, my…face.” She grimaced. “Although I hope it doesn’t.”

“When I asked if you murdered that man,” Cassian ventured, paying careful attention to how he worded the question. “You said you didn’t know.”

“Because I don’t,” Jyn replied. “The days are just…gray. Shadows. I have very few memories of them.”

Chirrut set aside his cup, the tea untouched. “How long is this curse to last?”

“One more year,” she said with a mixture of relief and dread.

“And Dr. Gerrera. Did he happen to mention a way to break this curse you have been bound with?”

Jyn sighed. “No. He couldn’t find anything.” She took a breath to continue then her gaze slid to the side and she said nothing else.

Chirrut raised his eyebrows, waiting. But he didn’t press the issue any further and tilted his head in Cassian’s direction as if to say _your move._

“Jyn, I – “ Cassian started but she cut him off.

“Am I free to go? I’ve told you what you wanted to know.”

A hint of sarcasm sharpened her words, rendered them brittle and dry. She might have extended the courtesy of asking but that didn’t mean she cared what response she was given.

“You were never a prisoner,” Cassian said.

Jyn stood and Cassian rose as well, all the while studying her face for any signs of madness. Yet her eyes were clear, her posture straight. Perhaps she clung to this fantasy out of grief for her father. He had seen the effects of mourning, how it could bring the strongest man to his knees, his mind lost forever.

As he walked her to the door, once they were out of hearing range of the sitting room, Jyn spoke.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe a word of it.”

Once Krennic had left, Jyn had slipped, just a little. Her manner of speaking had softened and she had allowed herself to sit still instead of run, protest, push away any form of help as she did when she first met him.

Now, she had returned once again to the comfort of her defiant and wild solitude.

“I’m…” Cassian started then shook his head. “To be honest, I don’t know what I believe at the moment.”

“Ever since I told you the truth, you’ve been looking at me like I’m insane.”

“It’s not a subject I’m familiar with.”

She cast a sideways glance at him and moved towards the door.

“How long?” he said.

She stopped. “How long what?”

“How long have you been like this?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’d like to know.”

She didn’t reply right away then admitted quietly, “Twelve years.”

Cassian still maintained his reservations regarding contact with a spiritual realm that had gone awry. But twelve years was a long time to live with the company of grief she wore on her sleeve, in the set of her shoulders, in her eyes.

 _You’re holding back something,_ Cassian wanted to say. Though, to be fair, he was, too. He had kept a majority of his skepticism to himself during Jyn’s explanation. If he expressed his doubts, she might clam up. As it was, he hardly had much information to go on. A séance, a dead doctor, a missing father. It didn’t make sense no matter which way he looked at it.

“You said you had one year left,” Cassian said. “What happens after that?”

“Then it’s…over.”

The way she said that last word – _over_ – it was too heavy to imply anything else but death, her own and not that of her predicament.

Cassian didn’t realize he was even thinking it, let alone serious about proposing it. But the words came out anyway, surprising himself with the echo of his own voice in the foyer.

“I’ll help you find your father.”


	5. Four

Kay was lost somewhere in this godforsaken house that smelled of old roses and dust.

After Cassian had brushed off his advice for the last time, Kay had considered returning to town, setting out for London in the morning as he had planned. But it was late and he wasn’t particularly fond of the thought that he would have to ride that damned horse all those miles again.

So Kay stomped through the house instead, muttering under his breath at the injustice of it. He had been faithful to Cassian for years, since their childhood, and this is the gratitude shown him for his loyalty?

He had meant to find the kitchen, the source of those tempting scents – spices and cooked meat – wafting through the rooms. But it had been a long time since his last visit to Festfield Hall and he must have taken a wrong turn along the way. His abrupt exit from the sitting room and his wounded pride had left him no chance to request that someone point him in the right direction.

After at least ten minutes of wandering, Kay finally came upon recognizable territory, though it wasn’t desirable territory. Looming in front of him was a set of double doors made of heavy, dark oak with twin brass ringed handles, dulled by rust and grime. He held the candle higher to confirm his suspicions, golden light kissing the shadows away.

The west wing.

At one time, the doors were an impressive display of artistry, inscribed with delicate carvings of fruits and flowers, ocean waves rising, topped with crests of airy foam despite its stiff wooden surface. The expert craftsmanship had been carved by the hand of Master Andor himself, Cassian’s father, a tribute to his adventures on the seas as a merchant and the foundation of Festfield Hall’s existence.

Kay had never set foot behind those doors and he likely never would. Whatever lay in the west wing was forbidden. Cassian had given a direct order that the doors be locked, the key destroyed. They would not open again for anyone.

Kay took a step closer, touched the aged door with two fingers, tracing the faded forms of faraway places Cassian’s father had witnessed and dreamed of for his own son. The wood paneling was soft and wet beneath his hand, spongy with the beginnings of rot, decaying while the house still stood.

_I could go in._

The thought startled Kay even as it crossed his mind, as if another voice had whispered it in his ear and it wasn’t of his own consideration.

But now that the thought had been introduced, it remained there, lurking at the edges of his mind, inhabiting the darker corners of questionable morality he didn’t dare cross into for fear of never returning.

It would serve Cassian right if Kay went through those doors. Kay had been ignored and cast aside all evening. Here was Kay’s chance to ignore Cassian’s express wishes, the perfect act of defiance. He would discover what Cassian wanted no one to see, not his faithful staff or even his closest friend. Cassian himself didn’t pass the threshold.

After a moment, Kay’s hand slid down the door and fell to his side. Though he may be displeased with Cassian’s behavior, Cassian was still his captain and Kay could never bring himself to disobey a direct order.

So it seemed he was still lost with nothing but his waning indignation for company.

Kay wandered the labyrinth of corridors, backtracking until the west wing was left behind and he found himself in more familiar surroundings. The light from his candle caught the gleaming curve of the polished stairwell that emptied onto the foyer…

And hushed voices made Kay’s steps slow.

He knew better than to eavesdrop.

Then again, Kay had already left the west wing alone as per Cassian’s orders. There were limitations to his good behavior.

“Why are you helping me?” Jyn, with her usual edge of wariness.

A pause.

“I know a little of what it’s like.” Cassian’s voice, low, barely audible with Kay’s distance. “To wish you could…change things. You might still have that chance.”

Kay sighed and closed his eyes, swearing under his breath. There would be no convincing Cassian to leave Jyn to her own devices now. This had become personal for him. _Emotional._ And when emotions were at hand, there was no place for logic.

The exchange continued for a minute more though Kay couldn’t hear it. But Jyn must have agreed to stay.

“I’ll have Bodhi show you to one of the guest rooms,” Cassian said.

Kay’s grip on his candle tightened and his teeth clenched. Certainly no place for logic.

He remained in the shadows as Bodhi and Jyn climbed the stairs and disappeared down the opposite hallway from him. Once they were out of sight, Kay stepped to the balustrade, his hand on the railing. He looked down on Cassian where he remained in the foyer with Chirrut and Baze, discussing something – Jyn, no doubt.

Bitterness was still burning in Kay’s veins from being repeatedly dismissed earlier. And he told himself his next decision wasn’t because of pettiness or jealousy. It was reasonable. Cassian didn’t require his services on land. That had been made clear enough. Kay was only useful at sea.

“I’ve decided,” Kay announced, his voice thunderous and bold in the gray foyer, “I will go to London after all.”

* * *

 

Cassian startled, turning to see Kay imperiously descend the staircase. He closed his eyes, suppressing a sigh.

“Kay, that won’t be necessary,” he said. “You’re welcome here. You know that.”

“Do I?”

Chirrut rested his hands atop the head of his cane, showing no inclination to move. Instead, he seemed to settle in, prepared to wait for the drama to unfold. Baze cast a glance at Cassian, nodded, and took Chirrut lightly by the elbow, guiding him towards the kitchen.

Once Baze and Chirrut were out of hearing range, Cassian faced Kay.

“I haven’t been fair to you,” he said, his voice low, hand outstretched in a soothing gesture. “And I owe you an apology for that.”

“Indeed you do,” Kay replied.

He folded his hands behind his back, chin tilted up; the usual stance he adopted when he believed Cassian to be a fool though he wouldn’t admit it aloud.

Cassian hesitated. Whatever he chose to say next, it was vital that he was careful to not rub salt in what appeared to be an already open wound on Kay’s part.

“She has nowhere to go,” Cassian said.

“So I heard.”

“The only possible living relative is a missing father.”

“Hardly shocking.”

“Kay,” Cassian hissed through gritted teeth in a chastising tone. “What if you were in her place? If given a chance to – “

“I _never_ had a chance,” Kay cut in. “I was abandoned on the steps of an orphanage. I wasn’t _wanted_. I don’t have memories of family who cared for me, like you do. I don’t have a missing father, like… _her._ The closest thing to a family I’ve ever had was you.” He flicked his hand out in a dismissive gesture, turning again. “Now I’m not sure I have that anymore.”

“Kay,” Cassian said, his voice strained and rough.

Kay paused, shoulders rigid.

“ _You_ are my family,” Cassian added. “You and Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze.”

“There’s a difference.”

As Cassian opened his mouth to protest that there really wasn’t any difference at all, Kay held up a hand for silence.

“I won’t presume to speak on behalf of the others but I will say that you and I are not related by blood.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Some part of you will always long for the true family you lost. It’s…” He hesitated, lowered his voice. “Logical,” he admitted at last, grudgingly.

“Then you, of all people,” Cassian said softly, “must understand why turning her out would be cruel.”

His gaze dropped to his hands as he rubbed at his palm with his thumb. He had been careful all evening to avoid the topic of his parents. It was bad enough to return to Festfield Hall and witness the remnants of their lives everywhere he looked – his father’s architecture, his mother’s favorite landscape painting above the fireplace in the sitting room.

But Jyn’s presence and the story of her missing father had only served as a bitter reminder of what he hadn’t wished to look in the face. No matter how many months he spent at sea, how many years he stayed away, coming home was a prison full of ghosts.

“I still don’t trust her,” Kay said.

“You don’t have to. Besides, I doubt she’ll be here for long. She’s granted me a fort night to find out what I can on the whereabouts of her father.”

Kay’s eyebrows rose and he glanced at Cassian in surprise. “ _She_ granted…?”

“Yes, Kay, she doesn’t want to be here any more than you want her here.”

“I didn’t say – “

Cassian laughed under his breath. “When you’re unhappy with my decisions, you’re hardly subtle about it.”

Kay squared his shoulders at a none-too-subtle angle of indignation. “Have I ever disobeyed your orders, Captain?”

Cassian dipped his head in acknowledgement. “No, you haven’t, I’ll grant you that. But you’ve never been one to hide your disagreements from me. A trait I value highly, even if it might not seem like it at times.”

“Such as today,” Kay pointed out wryly.

Cassian released a long, slow breath. “Yes. Such as today.”

A pause settled between them, liquid with relief after the tension from moments before.

“Do you still intend to go to London then?” Cassian ventured. “I could use any assistance you might offer to find Jyn’s father. You were always good with managing those sorts of details, far better than I was.”

Kay slid a sideways glance his way. “Flattery, Captain?”

Cassian shrugged. “Merely an honest compliment that has been long overdue.”

Kay gave a small hum of agreement. “Will she be accompanying you?”

“No. She insisted it was safer if she remained here.”

Kay tipped his head to the side, considering then slowly said, “I suppose I might be persuaded to join you. Although I won’t entirely rule out London.  Should this house decide to finally cave in on us, I’m not sleeping with the horses.”

* * *

 

If Jyn felt out of place in the sitting room with its rich – though faded – furniture and soft, intricate rugs, she could barely set foot in the guest bedroom Bodhi had presented to her.

“I apologize that it’s not ready for you right away,” he said as he hurried through the room, stripping away dust cloths like cobwebs from the bed, the chairs, the nightstand.

“I certainly wouldn’t expect it to be,” Jyn replied. She rubbed the back of her leg with the top of her foot absently, wishing she wasn’t so utterly filthy in such a fine house.

Cassian’s proposition had been ridiculously, foolishly tempting. Whether he was a man of his word or not, she was well aware that spending any length of time near other people would be a risk she shouldn’t take.

For years, she had conjured up thousands of scenarios to explain what happened to make Galen leave and never search for her again. In the long nights, when she was wide awake and waiting for the dread of dawn to rise, she would allow herself to slip, just a little and imagine what it would be like to reunite with him. He would wrap his arms around her and hold her as tightly as he used to and it would seem as if no time had passed at all.

But she found herself dwelling on that fantasy less and less lately.

One year. She had one year left. Almost her entire life had been spent waiting for her father, searching for him, hoping she would spot him on the horizon, come for her at last.

She couldn’t afford to wait any longer. So, despite her better judgment, she had accepted Cassian’s offer.

Now, as she surveyed the room that would be hers for the following month, regret began to seep in, cold with its unwelcome reality.

Jyn fiddled with the door knob, fingers exploring the chilled, dusty metal.

“Does this…have a lock?” she ventured, attempting to sound casual.

Bodhi paused, half stooped over the bed as he fluffed the pillows for a third time. “I…yes?” His gaze darted from the door to her face. “If you’re worried about your reputation – “

Jyn choked on a dry, humorless laugh. _Reputation._ As if she had one to begin with, wandering the moors in a shift with blood on her hands and a restless spirit masquerading with her body.

“No,” she said. “That’s not – no.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said softly, though she could tell he didn’t grasp her meaning.

“It’s better if I can lock myself in. During the day, that is.”

Bodhi straightened as understanding lit up in his eyes. “Oh, yes. Right. I’m sure there’s a key around here…”

As he began rifling through the drawers of the wardrobe, Jyn’s gaze fell on the windows. They were nearly as tall as she was, looking out on what might have been a garden at one point but was sprawling and overgrown now to the point that it was merely a patch of weeds that had become out of control.

“And the windows?” she said. “Do they have a lock as well?”

Bodhi paused, a frown slowly beginning to form. Before he could respond, she caught footsteps behind her and turned to see Chirrut and Baze approach. Baze carrying a dish of soap and pitcher of hot water swirling clouds of steam up towards his face. Chirrut with a pile of various fabrics draped over his arm.

“Captain Andor would like you to know,” Baze said as he poured the pitcher into the basin on the washstand. “That dinner is not a rushed affair, and if you would prefer to take your meal in your room, that is perfectly acceptable.”

 _Dinner,_ Jyn thought. How was she supposed to manage that? When was the last time she had a real dinner where she used a fork instead of her fingers? Even with Dr. Gererra, she was the one to scare up rabbits from the hedges when he was too busy with patients to bother putting food on the table.

Chirrut deposited the pile of fabrics on the bed and as he spread them out, Jyn realized what they were.

Dresses. Skirts of pale blue and rich earth brown, plum purple and the most delicate shade of sunrise pink. Clothing a lady might wear, not a farm girl.

“Young Master Andor also wished to provide you with appropriate attire,” Chirrut said.

A curl of panic wrapped around Jyn’s heart. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen. It’s not what she agreed to. She said she would stay, yes, but nothing more. Certainly not dinner where she might be expected to carry on polite, inane conversation when the spirit’s cold grip squeezed her heart.

She didn’t belong here among these people with their smooth speech and refined manners. She had always been rough around the edges, dirt under her fingernails, running barefoot with the wind tangled in her hair.

To be part of something as normal as wearing a proper gown felt strange and impossible to grasp after so many years of living on the outskirts of civilization.

Gingerly, Jyn picked up one of the dresses – a modest cut with a neat, plain bodice and the purest, sweetest blue, so reminiscent of the sky, a color she hadn’t seen in a long time. The fabric whispered and gave off the faint musty smell of lavender.

A thought drifted into her mind and she snatched it, held tight. She had already been introduced to everyone in the household – Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze. Not one woman among them.

“Whose are these?” Jyn said.

Chirrut cupped her hands in both of his, pressing the fabric further into her palms.

“They belonged to Cassian’s mother, Lady Andor,” he said then bowed his head for a moment, eyes closed. “May she rest in peace.”

Jyn jolted at Chirrut’s words. “I can’t possibly wear – “

“The young master insisted someone finally put them to good use. Believe me when I say if Lady Andor were here, she would agree.”

Chirrut patted her shoulder, retrieved his cane from where he’d propped it beside the bed, and left the room, Baze following after him.

Bodhi lingered for a few moments as Jyn stared at the dress like a scrap of sky in her hands.

“Do you – if you need anything,” he said. “I’ll be in the hall.”

Jyn didn’t reply. Absently, she traced a finger along the neckline’s stitching, practically invisible it was so small. Far better than her stitches had ever been.

Then she laid the dress on the bed beside her with the others and snatched her hands away, fingers twisted together.

“I won’t be coming down for dinner,” she said. “It’s best that my presence is kept to a minimum. I don’t trust…the spirit. Around other people.”

Bodhi inched closer. “I think we could manage. Spirit or no spirit, you are still a guest and we intend to treat you as such. You don’t have to be locked away.”

_Yes, I do._

“That’s very kind of you,” Jyn said.

“But it doesn’t change your answer, does it?”

Jyn shook her head. Bodhi retrieved the gown she had been admiring before.

“You do realize,” he said gently, “that whether you choose to leave this room or not at any point during your stay here, these are yours.”

Jyn met Bodhi’s gaze, the earnestness in his eyes unprotected and vulnerable.

“You need something warmer than what you’re wearing,” he added. “These dresses have been hidden away in a trunk for twenty years or more. Someone might as well put them to good use.”

Tentatively, Jyn trailed her knuckles along the fabric. “But…”

She couldn’t imagine anyone touching any of her mother’s things after her passing. Someone must have though. When Gerrera came for her that fateful night, she had never returned to her modest little home or her mother’s grave resting beneath the ancient oak. After all this time, a new family must have moved in, cleared out what was left of the lives of her parents…

“It was Cassian’s idea to begin with.” Bodhi draped the dress over Jyn’s arms. “I can assure you, he won’t be upset. You could at least see how it fits. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to try on any of the others.”

Jyn knew she should protest but she couldn’t bring herself to. For the past four years, she had been wearing shifts and anything else she dared to snatch from clothes’ lines without getting caught. She purposefully chose articles of clothing that were so worn or patched that they wouldn’t be noticed if they went missing but they didn’t last long, run through and in tatters by only a few months.

Now she had the chance to wear a real dress with fabric that didn’t itch like the rough frocks she used to wear when she was little.

“Just one,” Jyn said.

Bodhi smiled and backed out of the room, drawing the door shut behind him.

Jyn shed the grimy shift, sending it billowing to the floor. The pitcher of water Baze had brought was piping hot and flushed her skin a raging red but she didn’t care. It was a welcome world of difference from the frigid streams and ponds she was used to bathing in.

A small round soap sat nestled in a dish beside the basin and Jyn picked it up and breathed in the sweet scent of honeysuckle on a deep breath. She scrubbed and scrubbed until the water in the washbasin turned murky brown and her skin felt deliciously raw and clean.

Then, finally, Jyn returned to the gown. Now she could run her hands over the soft fabric to her heart’s content without worrying that she was ruining it with her filth. She drew it over her head and closed her eyes at the silkiness of it settling across her shoulders, hugging her ribs, flaring out around her hips.

But the laces proved to be overwhelming. She couldn’t tug on them both at the same time and keep the dress from puddling around her waist. And the more she pulled on the laces, the more tangled they became until they were a hopeless mass of knots.

Jyn bit back a growl of frustration and finally admitted defeat. She cracked the door open.

“Bodhi,” she hissed, a small, desperate plea.

Bodhi spun, eyebrows raised, expectant. Then he caught a glimpse of her, just enough to see the way she held the loose bodice to her chest. His gaze darted away and he rubbed the back of his neck. She supposed it was indecent of her, at least where proper society was concerned, but she hadn’t lived in proper society before and she had stopped giving a damn a long time ago.

“Can you…?” she trailed off, hoping she didn’t have to explain.

Bodhi glanced towards the stairs, flustered. He turned back to face her, nodded and she stepped aside for him to enter the room. She stood there for a moment, shoulders hitched a little too high. If she wanted his help, she would have to turn her back on him. She would have to trust him.

“Is there - ?” Bodhi stopped, cleared his throat. “Is there something you needed me for?”

“The laces.”

“I see.”

Jyn clenched her teeth and forced herself to turn around.

“Where - ?” Bodhi started, his voice slightly strangled.

“The laces,” she repeated. “I can’t get them myself. I don’t...” She stopped at the heat of shame that crept up her neck and she hated herself for it. At twenty years old, she was a woman grown. This shouldn’t leave her baffled.

“Yes,” Bodhi said. “But what I – that is – you’re not wearing…a corset.”

“…corset?”

Bodhi moved past her to sort through the gowns on the bed. After a moment, he found what he was looking for and held it up.

Jyn swore.

* * *

 

As Bodhi tied Jyn’s corset into place, he couldn’t believe the outrageously indecent situation he had managed to get himself into. But who else could Jyn have asked for help?

There were no lady’s maids at hand. It wasn’t as if he could pop ‘round to the closest neighbors over five miles away and borrow one of their maids to assist her, not at this hour and certainly not with Jyn’s…condition. She may have scoffed when Bodhi mentioned concern regarding her reputation – unchaperoned and living in the same house with five other men – but she wasn’t the only one who would be affected if word got out that Cassian was keeping a woman under his roof with no intention of marrying her.

So it was Bodhi who waded into the territory of lady’s undergarments, trying his best to ignore the surge of heat in his face. He supposed he could have fetched someone else but the fewer people who knew about it the better. And if it meant Bodhi was shunned for entering a woman’s quarters while she was in a state of undress, well, it wasn’t as if that would be any different than how most people welcomed him now.

Bodhi coaxed the sleeves of Jyn’s gown up her arms, over her shoulders and fastened the laces.

“There,” he said, tugging at the extra fabric around her middle. “It might need to be taken in by an inch or two but…”

Jyn rolled her shoulders, straightened her spine and inhaled deeply. “There are so many layers,” she said, her hand gliding down the bodice to bury her fingers in the skirts. “And it’s heavy.”

“Warmer than a shift.”

She turned to face him, a little stiff, her back too rigid as she adjusted to the restrictions of clothing. Bodhi reached up and placed his hands on her shoulders. She flinched and cast a wary glance at him but he just smiled and she relaxed enough to let him guide her to the vanity near the window.

Jyn was silent as she studied herself in the mirror. There was nothing remarkable about the gown she wore. The style was plain without frills or ruffles, not even a scrap of lace, and the fabric bordered on too thin for use. There were other dresses far more elegant than this one but she had chosen it, marveling over it as if she had never seen the color before.

Bodhi gathered her hair into his hands and brought it up to the top of her head, a few stray locks drifting down to curl around her face. The dirt had been scrubbed away, the scent of honeysuckle soap lingering in the air. But the wildness remained there in her eyes, dark, waiting.

“Hold still a minute,” he said. “Don’t move.”

He released her hair, sending it cascading down again as he pulled open the vanity’s drawers until he found a box of hair pins.

“There’s really no point – “ Jyn started.

“I know,” Bodhi said as he gently turned her to face the mirror again. “You’re not going to dinner. This is just for you.”

Jyn barely breathed as he began twisting her hair back, securing it in place. After a few minutes, he could feel her relax as she studied him in the mirror.

“Do you do this sort of thing often?” she said.

“Not of late,” he replied around two pins clamped between his teeth. “When I was young, my mother used to have the thickest dark hair, all the way down to her waist.”

“Used to?” Jyn said softly.

Bodhi concentrated on pinning a coil of hair and didn’t meet Jyn’s eye in the mirror, well aware he was being scrutinized.

“She fell sick,” he said. “When she became too weak to care for herself, I tended her as best I could. Brushed her hair and put it up in the style she always wore.”

“I’m sorry,” Jyn whispered.

Bodhi managed a small smile for her in the mirror. “It was a long time ago.”

“May I ask how you ended up here? At…what did you call it?”

“Festfield Hall. I came because my mother and I were looking for a new life, a fresh start. Mother didn’t survive the ship’s journey and I landed on England’s shores alone at four years old.”

Jyn said nothing and she diverted her gaze to her hands. He was grateful for it, too. No placating, empty words, no pitying glances. Simply the comfort of silence.

“A generous man found me on the streets that first night,” Bodhi went on, retrieving another pin from the box. “At the time, my English was terrible but I remember clearly how he promised to do what he could to help me. He said I reminded him of his baby daughter.”

Bodhi shook his head at the memory, how faded it had become and yet still carried a pang of bittersweetness to it as strong as the day it had occurred.

“As it turned out,” he continued. “He was acquainted with Cassian’s father who needed a new groomsman to care for his horses. Galen couldn’t take me in but – “

Jyn’s hand flew up and caught his wrist. She twisted around to look at him, the movement tugging a lock of her hair free from his hands and sending it spilling down her back again.

“That name,” she said. “Say it again.”

Bodhi blinked, startled. “Who? Galen?”

“Galen Erso?”

“I…I don’t know. I didn’t – he didn’t tell me his last name.”

Jyn’s grip on his arm tightened, suffused with a burgeoning hope as bright as the sun. “Dark hair, brown eyes, soft spoken. He had an old nag with one white stocking and a crooked ear – “

“Yes! That’s Galen.”

The light in Jyn’s eyes faded to a shadow of sadness. “He was – is – my father.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. I’ll never forget his kindness towards me.”

Bodhi offered his hand palm up, sharing the comfort of silence as she had done for him before. Jyn placed her hand in his without hesitation this time.

“Please tell me more,” she said, her voice rough. “Tell me everything you remember, no matter how insignificant the detail might be.”

Bodhi took her hand and gestured for her to sit as he drew a footstool alongside her. She gazed down at him, shivering with anticipation, and he brushed a tumbled strand of her hair aside.

He hadn’t shared the memory with many people, except for perhaps Cassian. Chirrut and Baze had found out about it eventually but not by his doing. It was a secret memory, one he held close and very dear. But he didn’t have the heart to deny Jyn such a small thing. If it had been him, he would have wanted the same, starved for every scrap he could collect of his mother to ease the ache of missing her.

“The first thing I noticed,” Bodhi said in a careful tone, as if such a moment could only be spoken of in hushed reverence to preserve it. “Was his voice and how gentle he sounded.”

Jyn closed her eyes, pressed her lips tight, and a tear slid down her cheek. Bodhi squeezed her hand and gave her every inch of that sacred memory he had kept to himself for so many years, wishing he could give her more.


	6. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still reading this, I am SO sorry for the delay on the update and thank you so, so much for sticking it out ♥

Cassian paced the dining room.

“What could possibly be taking so long?” he muttered.

Kay, seated at the table, examining the wood grain, was unimpressed with Cassian’s unusual—and unnecessary—agitation.

“Captain,” he said. “You have spent a majority of your life on board a ship with less than refined men who use coarse language and tell ribald jokes that fail to be humorous in any way. Your experiences with the fairer sex have been considerably limited.”

“Meaning?”

“Put simply—women are…unusual creatures. I imagine a woman allegedly possessed by an evil spirit is even more so.”

Cassian huffed and slipped out into the foyer to check the stairs again. No sign of Jyn. Or Bodhi for that matter.

“I thought you told her to take her time,” Kay called out to him.

“I did,” Cassian replied.

“Well, you’re rushing.”

“I’m not—” Cassian bit back a growl as he came to stand in the doorway of the dining room so he didn’t have to raise his voice any louder. “I’d just like to ensure she is properly settled.”

Chirrut, also seated at the table, who had been silent up ‘til now, rubbed his thumb over the top of his cane.

“Perhaps you should go up there and see for yourself,” he said.

Cassian made a noise of hesitancy. “I don’t wish to crowd her. She seems…anxious around me as it is.”

“She’s in foreign territory, young Master Andor. Of course she’s anxious.”

“I agree with Mr. Imwe,” Kay said.

Cassian stopped in his tracks, eyebrows raised. Kay spread his hands at Cassian’s glance of surprise.

“Any number of things could have happened to cause the delay,” Kay said. “Mr. Imwe has a point. You should see for yourself that nothing has gone…amiss.”

A reasonable conclusion, Cassian thought. If it weren’t for the distinct pause in Kay’s voice, he might have taken his advice. And yet he knew that sort of pause too well.

“I suppose you have some specific disaster in mind,” Cassian said in a dry tone.

Kay shrugged. “Murder, perhaps?”

Cassian clenched his teeth with a look as if to say, _we talked about this_. Kay’s expression remained neutral, lacking any signs of chagrin or remorse.

Cassian sighed and left the dining room, telling himself it was not because of Kay’s remark. Even though it might have been. A little bit.

As Cassian approached Jyn’s room, he heard voices pitched in a low murmur, muffled by the door. He tapped lightly.

“Jyn,” he said. “It’s Cassian. I came to see how you were settled and if you needed anything.”

The voices went quiet. A moment later, the door opened to reveal Bodhi. Standing behind him at a distance by the vanity table was Jyn.

Most of the dirt had been scrubbed away. Any shadows that remained on her skin were her own. Her cheeks looked too sharp, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

And she was wearing one of his mother’s favorite gowns. The simplest one she had owned, but she had loved it for the color.

 _It makes me feel like I’m wearing the sky,_ she used to say as she ran her hands over the fabric.

Cassian hadn’t seen that dress in years.

He must have been staring too long. Jyn curled her fingers into the skirts, shifted back from the vanity table. The trapped-animal look in her eyes returned, wary and mistrustful.

“Mr. Imwe said I could…wear this,” Jyn said haltingly, as if she expected an outburst.

Cassian nodded. “It’s yours.”

“He told me it belonged to your mother.”

Her voice softened with reverence, as if she knew how sacred that word was.

“It did,” Cassian managed to reply past his dry throat. “But she’s…she’s been gone for a while now.”

“I’m sorry,” Jyn whispered.

A stillness drifted between them, different than the tension from before. Slowly, Jyn uncurled her fingers from the skirts and glanced down at her hands.

“I can’t stay here,” she said softly.

Cassian frowned. “If there is something you need that I have overlooked—”

“No,” Jyn cut in. “No. You have been very kind. But…”

“But what?” he prompted.

“You must lock me in and you can’t do that in this room.”

Cassian blinked. “I don’t believe I understand.”

“The spirit I carry with me. It will break those windows. It’s happened before.”

Cassian glanced at Bodhi and tipped his head towards the door. Bodhi nodded and slipped out.

“I’ll have the windows boarded up,” Cassian said.

Jyn’s shoulders sagged visibly. Cassian took the opportunity to inch a little closer and folded his hands behind his back to appear as non-threatening as possible.

“Is there anything else you’d like?” he said.

Jyn traced one finger idly along the vanity table’s corner. She shook her head.

“Might I accompany you to dinner?” Cassian offered.

Again, Jyn shook her head.

“I shouldn’t,” she said. “I haven’t…I haven’t been around people very much. I don’t know how…it…will react. To you. To the others.”

Cassian nodded. “Bodhi will return in a few minutes to take care of your windows. Should you require anything else, I’m just down the hall.”

“Thank you,” Jyn said quietly, her gaze still focused on the edge of the vanity table and not at him. “And…Cassian?”

He stopped at the threshold. “Yes?”

“In the morning, if you should hear anything…” She faltered. Her finger went still against the vanity table’s surface. “Don’t open the door.”

Cassian studied her for a moment. Jyn raised her gaze to meet his. He nodded.

“The door will remain locked during daylight hours.”

Jyn dropped her gaze back to the vanity table with a breath of relief.

When Cassian returned to the dining room, alone, he did not receive a warm welcome.

“You seem to have forgotten someone, Master Andor,” Chirrut said.

“I didn’t forget anyone,” Cassian replied. “Jyn has decided she won’t be joining us this evening.”

Despite Chirrut’s lack of sight, his silence was more effective than any pointed look could have been.

“She’s our guest, Chirrut,” Cassian said. “I won’t press her.”

“Perhaps rather than be interrogated, the young woman needs company and conversation.”

Cassian swallowed his retort. To argue with Chirrut was fruitless, especially when Cassian couldn’t form a sound reason to counter his logic. Jyn did need company and conversation.

But she had barely agreed to stay under his roof as it was. He wouldn’t ask anything else of her.

Cassian found he had little appetite. He poked at his food for a polite few minutes until he could make his excuses and retired for the evening. Between the absence of his ship, returning home to an onslaught of memories he had left behind, and Jyn’s appearance, he was well and truly exhausted with thoughts of only his bed.

As he passed Jyn’s room, he considered knocking one last time, just to say good-night.

Instead, he held his breath…and listened.

Nothing out of the ordinary. No light seeped from under the door either. She must be asleep.

Bodhi had deposited the key to Jyn’s room on Cassian’s nightstand. It seemed absurd, locking her in. He would never treat a guest so abominably.

Then again, Jyn was no ordinary guest. As much as he thought Kay’s suspicions of her were ludicrous and exaggerated, Cassian knew it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious while a stranger was in his house until he knew more of Jyn Erso.

Cassian didn’t really sleep. He tossed and turned, fitful in his fatigue, until the first threads of dawn began to weave across the floor. Jyn’s words continually rolled over and over in his mind, filling his thoughts with spirits and ghosts and impossible supernatural occurrences that he knew must have some explanation and yet he could conjure nothing of reason and logic.

Then a sound, faint yet impossible to miss.

A keening whine in the dark.

Cassian’s blood ran cold.

He lit a candle and eased his door open, following the sound along the hallway wreathed in shadows.

Right to Jyn’s door.

Cassian put his hand to the wood. Was she…crying?

He stood there, wavering, unsure what to do or say. More than likely she wished to be left alone. Although after everything she had suffered already, it felt wrong to abandon her.

Cassian bit back an oath and rubbed at his forehead. Bodhi and Chirrut were much better suited to this sort of thing than he was. But he had kept them up so late the night before and it didn’t seem fair to wake them.

Hesitantly, Cassian raised his hand to the door and…

_Tap, tap, tap._

“Jyn?” he said. “Is everything all right?”

The crying stopped. Silence pulsed so loud that Cassian could hear his heartbeat, pounding like thunder.

Quiet and soft came a voice on the other side of the door.

“Cassian?”

Not Jyn’s voice.

“Is that you?”

Cassian stumbled in retreat and nearly dropped his candle. The flame trembled in the encroaching darkness. He hurried back to his room, fumbled through the drawers of his nightstand until he found the key to Jyn’s room.

When he returned to her door, his hand was shaking. The cold metal of the key was frigid against his skin. He squeezed it tight to compose himself, the outline of the key imprinted on his palm.

“Cassian,” the voice said.

The voice he knew so well. The voice he hadn’t heard in so many years.

The voice he thought he would never hear again.

“Cassian, please. Let me out.”

_In the morning, if you should hear anything…don’t open the door._

He hadn’t promised, not exactly. Perhaps he should have.

Cassian plunged the key into the lock. Twisted. The lock grated open. He curled his fingers around the door knob and pulled.

 


	7. Six

It should have been Jyn standing there. But it wasn’t.

With the windows boarded over, the faint light of dawn was made even more fragile, slipping through the cracks, twining across the floor in thin golden threads.

Except for the corner, next to the bed, where no light could reach. A different sort of darkness reigned there, so frigid that gray ice crystals skittered up the walls with a hiss and crackle. Black tendrils stretched out like fingers, grasping and swallowing what meager light managed to get close.

At the center of that pool of darkness was a pale face of bone. The mouth gaped open…

“Cassian,” came his mother’s voice. “My sweet boy. I’ve missed you.”

It wasn’t his mother. It couldn’t be. But the likeness of his mother’s voice—the inflection and cadence—were so similar that Cassian couldn’t tell the difference even now as he witnessed this… _thing_ …that was not his mother nor was it Jyn.

Then the face rose and a skeletal body came into view. Between exposed ribs that gleamed white in the dark, a pumping red heart was visible—a garish sight to behold, vulnerable in its visibility when it should have been hidden beneath layers of muscle, sinew, tendon, and skin.

Beside the horror of the heart, there was something else, something just as equally bloody red…

A rose.

It dripped onto the floor with the weight and wetness of blood. But when the blood made contact with the floor, it didn’t stain. All that remained was a single crimson rose petal.

The creature—whatever it was, he had no name for it—took a step towards him, fingers an inch away from caressing his cheek.

That’s when the grief hit him. A tidal wave of it, pulling him down to his knees.

The door slammed shut.

A pair of hands dragged him away and a piercing shriek ripped through the stillness.

Not his mother’s voice anymore.

Cassian was hauled along the corridor and it was only after he had turned the corner—Jyn’s door disappearing from view—that he could breathe easily again. He didn’t notice, before, how tight and burdened his lungs had felt, looking at what had once been Jyn.

Now, Cassian was clear-headed enough to realize that Baze was the one manhandling him.

“That’s quite enough, thank you, Mr. Malbus,” Cassian said, attempting to shrug off Baze’s grip.

Baze ignored him and didn’t let go until they reached the library.

Chirrut was seated at the table with a tower of books across from him, his cane resting beside him. He didn’t look at Cassian but kept his face turned towards the lavender gray morning light beginning to creep over the landscape outside the window.

“Now that your eyes have seen,” Chirrut said. “Do you believe her, Master Andor?”

Cassian glanced at the open door. This deep into the house, away from Jyn’s room, any sound was swallowed by silence. He couldn’t hear that echo of his mother’s voice and he couldn’t hear the unearthly shriek that creature had screamed. He didn’t know what he had seen, let alone could he bring himself to believe it.

“Why am I here, Chirrut?” Cassian said.

Baze took the seat across from Chirrut, sliding one of the massive, old dusty tomes towards him.

“Mr. Malbus and I have been curious about our guest,” Chirrut replied. “So, we did some light reading while you feigned a poor attempt at sleeping.”

Cassian’s gaze fell to the book before Baze. “I assume you found something of interest?”

Chirrut nodded. “Do you remember anything of our Greek mythology lessons?”

“Barely.”

“Then I suppose you won’t remember the Algea. Personified spirits of sorrow, grief, and pain.”

Baze flipped a few pages and pushed the book towards Cassian, pointing to a passage at the bottom of the page.

_Spirits who bring weeping and tears. Related to gods of mourning and misery._

Cassian shook his head.

“You can’t be serious, Chirrut.”

“Read on,” was Chirrut’s only reply.

Cassian sighed and returned his attention to the book, too impatient for much more than scanning the page. Then one phrase sprang out at him and he latched onto it.

_Manifested in human form by grief, particularly after the death of a loved one._

Cassian rapped his knuckles on the table in thought. It still wasn’t logical but…he could see how the pieces might fit.

Jyn’s father, missing under unexplained circumstances.

Her mother, long since buried.

The blood on her hands as she stood like a ghost amid the mist of the moors.

But it only made sense if he was living in a myth. Which he wasn’t. None of them were. Cassian hauled the book closed with a thump of finality.

“The death of a loved one,” Cassian said. “That’s a common occurrence around the world. If some…spirit of sorrow and mourning decided to manifest itself, there would be thousands of cases similar to Jyn’s.”

“True,” Chirrut said lightly. “But how many of those people would stumble into the middle of a séance with a window to another world wide open?”

“Séance,” Cassian muttered, turning away as he scrubbed a hand through his hair.

“No matter how hard you look for another solution,” Baze put in. “You arrive at this same conclusion.”

“Over and over again,” Chirrut added. “I’m inclined to believe Miss Erso.”

Cassian closed his eyes. “That’s good to know.”

He had seen… _something_. He knew that. But he couldn’t write it off as a trick of the light. There had been no light in the first place. Only darkness, grief, and the pleading echo of his mother’s voice.

***

Jyn woke in the middle of the floor, her knees hugged to her chest, shivering with the remnants of pain as her bones eased back into place.

Darkness of full night caressed her skin, soft and complete, unlike the cold grip of the spirit’s darkness enveloping her. Sometime during the early morning hours, through the gray haze, she could have sworn she’d heard someone’s voice, calling to her.

But she hoped she was wrong. To think that anyone in this house would see her after she had turned was a miserable thought.

A pounding on the door made Jyn startle, heart fluttering against her ribs.

“Miss Erso,” Cassian said, sharp and loud. “Are you…?” He hesitated and, in that moment, Jyn knew.

He had seen her after sunrise.

“Are you decent?” Cassian finished.

There was a telltale hitch to that last word, _decent_. It wasn’t adequate to convey what he truly meant, if indeed there was a genteel, tactful word for _possessed_.

Jyn rose to her feet shakily and crossed the room on unsteady legs. For the first hour or two after the change she always felt like a newborn lamb, learning how to walk all over again.

Jyn opened the door to find Cassian with a dark look of displeasure in his eyes, his mouth a severe, thin line. His hands were braced on either side of the doorway, chin dipped low, jaw clenched to hard rigidity.

Before, he had tried to be a welcoming host, despite how ill-suited and ill-practiced the role was on him.

That attempt was gone now. This man standing in front of her was a naval captain through and through. When he gave an order, it would be obeyed.

“I want the truth,” Cassian said through gritted teeth. “You have not been forthcoming with me.”

Jyn remained silent.

“The curse,” he went on. “You didn’t mention how to break it.”

“If I knew,” she replied, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice. “Don’t you think I would have done it already?”

“I will not presume to know why you do or do not act upon your knowledge.” He paused then added, “Unless you can’t do it alone.”

Jyn’s fingers tightened around the door handle.

“I saw it,” Cassian said. “And it spoke to me.”

With that, the stiffness of his shoulders melted out of him. His hands slid away from the doorway, his posture no longer threatening.

The sight of her, of the spirit, had shocked him, rattled the solid foundation of everything he knew about the world. And he was still adjusting to make sense of it, to come to grips with the realization that there were unexplainable, terrible things he could not supply logic or reason to.

Only then did Jyn notice that Cassian wasn’t properly dressed. It appeared he may have never reached that point at any time during the day.

He wore no waistcoat or cravat and his plain white shirt was untucked, hanging loose on his lean frame. The collar gaped open and low to reveal his throat down to the planes of his chest.

Jyn averted her gaze, chastising herself for the faint flush of heat at the back of her neck. She was not accustomed to being around people, let alone men, and certainly not in such close proximity as she was standing to Cassian now.

“Did it hurt you?” she said, striving to keep her focus on the conversation at hand.

“No,” Cassian replied. “But it used my mother’s voice.”

Jyn’s gaze darted back to him. Even if the spirit hadn’t physically caused him harm, it had still brought a fair amount of pain upon him.

“A trick,” Jyn said. “To draw you in. Don the appearance of someone you trust in order to trap you.”

“There was a…a rose, too,” Cassian added, haltingly. “In your—” He patted his side.

“It grows from my heart,” Jyn supplied. “The spirit ensures that it feeds from my grief. Dr. Gerrera believed the rose was the key. Once my heart is…”

Jyn trailed off, biting the inside of her cheek. When Dr. Gerrera confided his theory, she had laughed in his face, knowing she would never break the curse.

More than likely, Cassian would react the same way.

“Go on,” Cassian prompted.

Jyn sighed. There was no use skirting around the issue any longer. And after what Cassian had witnessed, he deserved the truth.

“Dr. Gerrera said the rose may die,” Jyn continued. “Once my heart reaches a balance. The grief must be countered by…love.”

She waited, searching Cassian’s face for amusement, disbelief, mockery.

“And you’re hoping,” he said. “That, should your father still be alive, he would be the one to set you free?”

“That was Dr. Gerrera’s answer, yes.”

Whether it would actually work was another matter.

Cassian paused, the weighted unsaid lingering. Jyn glanced down at her hands, speaking what he would not.

“If my father is gone, then I have no hope left.”

“Wait until you have proof one way or the other,” Cassian replied. “I’ve written to a few contacts, locally as well as throughout London. A response should arrive within a few weeks. We will find him.”

Jyn managed a faint smile of appreciation. It wasn’t much of a change from their first meeting. There was still some skepticism in his eyes, which she didn’t entirely blame him for. But at least she wasn’t being sent off to prison or the madhouse.

Then her smile faded to a frown.

“If you saw the spirit, you must have felt it, too,” she said.

Cassian’s gaze wandered down the collar of Jyn’s dress to her heart before he remembered himself and stopped staring.

“Yes, I did,” he said. “It was…hard to breathe.”

He placed a hand over his chest, absently rubbing back and forth, inhaling a deep breath as if the memory alone was suffocating.

Cassian shook his head. “I didn’t heed your warning. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

Jyn wanted to press him further for details. What did the spirit say to him? Did it touch him?

But he seemed all right, if a little tired and dazed. He must have waited all day, struggling to make sense of what he had seen, before he could question her about it.

After Jyn had reached a certain age, Dr. Gerrera avoided her and didn’t speak to her about much of anything, let alone the possession she carried.

While Jyn had held reservations in mentioning the spirit to others, there was a measure of relief in it as well. To know she wasn’t the only one who had seen this horror, who had felt the crushing weight of grief she bore, was a comfort. Even if guilt did accompany the realization that she had afflicted another mind with this darkness.

Jyn reached across the distance between them, her fingers alighting on Cassian’s forearm.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

An apology to encompass many things and yet inadequate for every single one of them.

Cassian’s gaze dropped to her hand on his arm. Jyn’s muscles tensed, preparing to pull away.

But Cassian withdrew his arm, covering her hand with both of his in a firm grip. Jyn’s fingers fell across his wrist, his pulse steady and strong beneath her touch.

Perhaps, in the end, Cassian’s heart was not so very different from her own, each of them carrying their own burden of sorrows.


	8. Seven

The next evening, when a gentle, inquiring knock came at Jyn’s door, she was confident it would be Cassian. At that realization, a strange sort of flutter took root in her stomach before she squashed it into submission.

She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the firm grip of his hands around hers, how welcome and comforting it had been to feel the warm touch of another human being.

Dr. Gerrera had hardly bestowed the comfort a child required. He hadn’t hurt or neglected her. She was cared for with proper food and clothes and a clean, dry place to sleep. But despite the vast knowledge he had procured over his lifetime—from medical to paranormal—when he looked at Jyn, she had seen it in his face.

He didn’t know what to do with her.

His knowledge did not extend to childhood, much less a childhood such as Jyn’s that was overcast by a curse he couldn’t cure.

So Dr. Gerrera had held her at arm’s length. He had never been cruel. He had never made her feel guilty for the unexpected burden of her presence, put upon him by her parents without any compensation for his troubles.

But as Jyn stood in the middle of her vast guest room, the phantom memory of Cassian’s hands wrapped around her own, she realized what she had been missing for so long.

She wasn’t alone in her struggle. Cassian may not be burdened with the possession of a spirit, but he knew what she felt, the hollowness that ached.

“Miss Erso?”

Chirrut’s voice.

A prickle of disappointment stabbed at Jyn’s heart but she shoved it aside and opened the door. Chirrut stepped in, carrying a tray laden with food and a teapot that gave off curls of pale steam.

“Young Master Andor sends his apologies that he will not be present this evening,” he said.

The disappointment grew and Jyn couldn’t dismiss it this time. Had she been wrong about him after all?

“Did he leave?” she said.

Chirrut slid the dinner tray onto the bedside table.

“He thought he might inquire after your father’s whereabouts, should the letters he sent out return with no word.”

Jyn sank onto the foot of the bed. She had already looked, asked everyone she knew, and no one had seen Galen Erso. It was as if he had disappeared into thin air.

How would Cassian manage to find anything she had not after years of searching?

Chirrut set to pouring tea, his hands sure and steady in their movements. He offered one cup to her, waiting until Jyn noticed and she accepted it. Then he poured a cup for himself and gestured to the seat at the vanity table.

“Would you mind if I join you?” he said.

Jyn paused, cup halfway to her lips. She had always been left to dine alone. The brief bouts of conversation she’d exchanged with others had lasted no more than a few minutes to minimalize the extent of her contact, per her request.

Before Jyn could respond, Chirrut held up a finger and placed his cup and saucer on the vanity table.

“One moment,” he said.

He left the room and returned with half a dozen books piled in his arms which he distributed on the bed beside Jyn.

Jyn stared at the books, her fingers tightening on the curved handle of her cup. They looked brand new, spines smooth, without a single crack of use. Probably expensive, too. She didn’t dare touch them.

At home, there had been three books perched on the mantel. Three tired, stained old books that were falling apart at the seams. But Jyn loved them anyway. She knew every word by heart and yet every night, when dinner was over and the day was done, she thrilled to choose one of those three books and hold the weight of its possibilities in her little hands.

Now, here she sat, with six books—twice as many as what she’d had before—and all she needed to do was pick them up, open their pages…

“I thought you might prefer some literature to occupy your mind,” Chirrut added. “While you await news of your father.”

Jyn didn’t respond. She could smell the books, their crisp pages and the faint dust that had accumulated on their covers.

“There’s quite a selection,” Chirrut went on. “Mythology, romance, science, history, astronomy. Pick and choose what you like. There’s more in the library.”

Jyn’s breath stuttered on that last word.

_Library._

It had an echo to it, a holy, reverent sound that seemed too precious to be spoken of in a voice any louder than a whisper.

“…library?” Jyn croaked.

“Young Master Andor has quite the soft spot for books of any and all variety. He has an extensive library that is most impressive. I haven’t seen it for myself but that’s what I’ve been told.”

Jyn’s cup rattled against the saucer, like teeth chattering in the cold. She set the cup down with finality on the bedside table. Her hand fell to the bedspread, her little finger two inches away from touching the books.

“Is there a problem, Miss Erso?” Chirrut said.

Jyn shook her head. Then she forced herself to speak when she realized Chirrut couldn’t see her.

“No, not at all,” she said. “It’s just—“

She faltered and stopped. It felt strange to mention that she was the daughter of a tenant farmer while she lived under a gentleman’s roof.

“I’ve heard,” Chirrut said. “That Lord Krennic isn’t a tolerant man.”

Jyn pressed her eyes closed. Whether she reminded anyone in this household of her position in society or not, it didn’t matter. They weren’t likely to forget.

“Books were forbidden for his tenants,” she replied.

“Well, he has no hold over you here,” Chirrut said. “You may read as much as you like. If these aren’t of interest, I can fetch something else.”

“I’m sure these will be wonderful.”

Finally, Jyn gathered her courage and picked up the book on the top of the pile—a fat, heavy volume of mythology.

“Mr. Malbus recommended that one,” Chirrut said. How he could tell which book she had chosen, she didn’t know. “He marked a passage that he thought you might like.”

A red ribbon spilled from the cream pages—a stream of crimson like dripping blood. Jyn opened the book, scanned the marked passage…

“I imagine it’s familiar to you already,” Chirrut said.

“This was Dr. Gerrera’s theory. Word for word. How did you…?”

“How did I know? I’m blind, Miss Erso. And when a blind man has no sight to take in the world around him, he learns to rely on his other senses—hear, touch, smell. I hear it in your voice. I feel the cold of your skin.”

He paused then added, “And I smell the rose. Might I inquire after your reason for keeping that part a secret?”

Jyn’s hand settled over her heart at the mention of the rose. She closed the book, but she couldn’t bring herself to push it away and left it resting on her lap.

“Wasn’t the rest of it fantastical enough?” she said.

Chirrut smiled. “Yes, it was. We’ve needed a tale like yours to liven up this dreary old place. May I?”

He gestured to the chair again.

“Yes,” Jyn relented, even though a small part of her was relieved that, for once, she wasn’t eating alone.

***

When Cassian returned to Festfield Hall, it was nearly sunrise. The horizon was transforming from velvet ink black to smooth blue, dusted with pink.

If he hurried, he might be able to speak to Jyn before the change came for her.

He shoved through the door into the foyer, too preoccupied to close it behind him. He took the stairs two at a time and rapped at Jyn’s door, impatient and sharp in his eagerness.

“Jyn?” he said. “Are you…?”

_Are you there?_

It had never seemed so ominous before than in that pause of stillness with his question unfinished. He didn’t want to hear his mother’s voice again, knowing it came from another creature that wasn’t her.

But the door opened and Jyn peered out, a halo of candle light casting her dark hair in gold. Just past her shoulder, Cassian caught a glimpse of Chirrut, head dipped towards his chest, asleep in a chair.

Jyn stepped aside to allow Cassian into her room.

“Chirrut kept me company this evening,” she said. “He tried to stay awake for as long as he could but I’m afraid I’m used to late nights more than he is.”

Jyn glanced down at her hands when her words ran out, as if she had been talking to hold at bay what Cassian was bound to say any moment now.

“Did you…?”

She blew out a breath, unable to finish that thought.

“I didn’t find your father,” Cassian said, apologetic.

Jyn continued to nod, not looking at him. She must have expected this, judging by the way she held so very still, so very quiet. Regardless, it couldn’t have been pleasant to hear.

“I’d like you to go with me tomorrow,” Cassian said.

Jyn’s gaze darted up, a flicker of confusion dark in her eyes.

“You mean…among people? I keep my distance for a reason.”

“I know you do. But—“

Cassian took a step forward, one hand spread open to her.

“I found Dr. Gerrera’s house,” he said.

Jyn blinked and shook her head as she retreated a step.

“No, I left that place years ago,” she said. “I can’t go back.”

“If you—“

“No,” Jyn hissed, recoiling.

She pressed herself into the shadows, withdrawing from him. The tentative balance that had been built to bring her into the light was quickly crumbling.

“It’s boarded up,” Cassian said. “Abandoned. You won’t hurt anyone. And I’ll be there with you.”

Jyn closed her eyes and turned her head away. She was slipping. The moment Cassian stepped out of this room and the door was closed, it would remain closed and he wouldn’t be able to reach her.

“Jyn,” Cassian said, firm and low. “I think Dr. Gerrera knew what happened to your father. Or he had some idea at least.”

Slowly, Jyn turned back to look at him.

“He would have told me,” she said.

“Unless he was protecting you.”

Jyn said nothing, watching him. The wariness was fading to understanding. Cassian had her attention. She would listen if he kept talking.

“The moment I mentioned your name or your father’s name in relation to Krennic, people refused to speak to me,” Cassian said. “They’re afraid of him. But the one thing I heard over and over was that Dr. Gerrera wasn’t scared. He confronted Krennic on more than one occasion. For your sake.”

Jyn’s lips tightened and she crossed her arms tightly, bracing herself as much as shielding herself.

“If Dr. Gerrera had walked away from Krennic empty-handed,” Cassian said. “He would have no reason to return to Krennic Court so many times.”

“Then why don’t we just talk to Krennic?” she said. “Cut right to the heart of this whole damn thing.”

“He would kill you,” Cassian said softly. “And if I requested an audience, I doubt he would admit to…”

Cassian trailed off before he could say, _murdering one of his tenants._

That wouldn’t be fair. He didn’t have evidence to back up that claim, even if it did seem to be the inevitable conclusion from where he was standing.

“Just come with me,” Cassian said. “Tomorrow evening. I promise to have you back here, behind locked doors, well before sunrise.”

Jyn dashed the back of her hand across her eyes. She considered for a few seconds, rubbing her arms, before she blew out a breath and nodded.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll go.”


End file.
